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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



RENOMINATION 



GROVER CLEVELAND. 



The Case of Cleveland 



CONSIDERED IN TWO LETTERS, BEARING DATE MAY 26, 1888, 
AND MAY 26, 1892. 



Originally Published in the ''New York Sun.'' 



-BY- 



JosEPH O'Connor, Of Rochester, N. Y. 



UVi . 



>iJi2LSHiNCTON.o:5>"' i/'M 



ROCHESTER, N. V.: 

POST-EXI'RESS PkINTING ChmFANY, 101 AND 103 East Main Street. 
i8q2. 



ETqos 

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Coi'VRKIHTEl) 1892 
KV 

Joseph O'Connor. 



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ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. 



LETTER DATED MAY 26, 1888. 



As the reader commonly likes to learn the 
standpoint of an unknown writer, it maj- be 
well to say, at the outset of this argument 
against the renomination of Mr. Cleveland, 
that I supported him for mayor of Bul¥alo 
in 1881, for governor of New York in 1882, 
and for president in 1881; that although the 
the enthusiasm with which I regarded him 
six years ago has cooled rapidly, I still look 
upon his success in the past as a good thing 
for the country, on the whole, as a political 
change was needed ; that there is no other 
man in whose rival fortunes I take the 
slightest interest ; that I am not a politician 
myself ; and that I have never asked a favor 
at the president's hands, nor expected any 
favor without the asking, so that his alleged 
lack of gratitude is not to me, as to some 
others, a personal grievance. 

Nor do I oppose Mr. Cleveland's renomina- 
tion on the theory that a president should 
not be eligible to re-election. To be sure 
the framers of the constitution, in failing to 
provide against the re-election of a president, 
left open a breach through which ruin might 
have come upon the republic ; but in accept- 
ing a second term and refusing a third term 
George Washington established a tradition 
which is better than the text of the constitu- 
tion as it stands, and better than any amend- 
ment declaring a president ineligible to re- 
election. The people may now elect a sec- 
ond time a great president whom they wish 
to honor further or whose guidance they re- 
Ciuire through a serious crisis ; they may per- 
mit a commonplace or unworthy president 
to retire to private life after four years, and 
they must in loyalty to the Father of his 
Country refuse to choose any man for a third 
term. 



THE USE OF A SECOND TERM. 

It is often asserted that a president eligi - 
ble to re-election will be temi^ted to pander 
to vulgar prejudices for the sake of populari- 
ty and employ the patronage of his office to 
control the action of his party and secure re- 
nomination and re-election. But only mean 
men and shortsighted ijoliticiaus are apt to 
fall into this error. To high-minded men 
and wise politicians, the hope of a second 
term becomes a powerful motive to act in 
such a way as to deserve it. And up to this 
point in our history, the people have rarely 
failed to discriminate between those who 
fairly earned a re-election and those who 
merely inti-igued for it. The simple facts 
are enough to show how admirably the 
present system has worked. The presi- 
dents chosen for a second term 
were George Washington, Thomas 
Jefferson, , James Madison, James 

Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, 
and Ulysses S. Grant: and the mere re- 
hearsal of these names is enough to overturn 
the theory that unworthy men may compass 
their own re-election and worthy men fail to 
win it. The people have often made a mis- 
take in choosing a man for one term, but 
they have seldom n^ade a mistake in choosing 
a man for two terms: and it is because I be- 
lieve so thoroughly in the eligibility of a 
Ijresident for a second term as a means 
of rewarding exceptional gi'eatnes.s, 
that I think Mr. Cleveland ought 
not to be renominated or re-elected. 
He belongs in the category with Ruth- 
erford B. Hayes, James Buchanan, Franklin 
Pierce, Millard Fillmore, John Tjder, and 
James K. Polk — the men who did not de- 
serve a second term and did not get it: and 



4 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. 



his re-election might go far to persuade me 
that there is a necessity for a constitutional 
amendment restricting the jiresident to one 
term. It would destroy the prestige of a 
second term altogether. 

cleat:land committed agai.vst it. 
Curiously enough, it is the opinion of Mr 
Cleveland, although he seems to be seeking a 
second term, that the president should not be 
eligible to re-election; and out of this fact 
has arisen a most obvious objection to his 
nomination. That he should strive for a sec- 
ond term, while holding that it should be 
made unlawful, is not altogether inconsis- 
tent. To be sure, George Washington, be- 
lieving a third term to be dangerous to the 
republic, did not require a constitutional 
amendment to brace him against the tempta- 
tion to accept it : but it is not fair to expect 
a man like Cleveland to live up to the stand- 
ard of George Washington. Unfortunately 
for himself, however, he has so stated the 
grounds of his opposition to the eligibility of 
the president to re-election, that he cannot 
seek a second term without being pronounced 
guilty of dishonor, iinder a more common- 
place code of ethics. 

The renewal of the movement against a 
second term, in our generation, rose out of 
opposition to the re-election of General 
Grant. The republicans who revolted from 
their party in 1872 were estimable gentle- 
men of the class that requires a high moral 
sanction for everything it does. They were 
not content with saying that the president 
they opposed should not be renominated, but 
they insisted that it was unpatriotic to re- 
elect any president, making use of a consti- 
tutional principle to shelter a purely per- 
sonal and political movement. Though badly 
beaten in 1S7'2, they had infliience 
enough four years later to induce Mr. 
Hayes to put into his letter of accept- 
ance, July 6, 1876, a promise not to run 
for the presidency a second time, if elected ; 
an act that has been criticised as a piece of 
contemptible self-abasement. Being in a 
charitable mood I am willing to concede that 
Mr. Hayes was honest, though mistaken in 
his action, and also that Mr. Tilden was sin- 
cere in the more judicious position which he 



took in his letter of acceptance, July 31, 
1876. He did not pledge himself to refuse a 
renomination, but he declared the eligibility 
of the president to re-election to be a constant 
source of corruption, and asserted that a 
genuine reform of the civil service would be 
impossible until he was made ineligible. The 
passage on the subject, in Mr. Cleveland's 
letter, is modeled on that in Mr. Tilden "s let- 
ter, though I am inclined to think that I rec- 
ognize a familiar hand in both. It is as fol- 
lows: 

"When an election to office shall be the selec- 
tion by the voters of one of their number to as- 
sume for a time a public trust instead of his ded- 
ication to the profession of politics ; when the 
holders of the ballot, quickened by a sense of 
duty, shall avenge truth betrayed and pledges 
broken, and when the suffrage shall be alto- 
gether free and uncorrupted, the full realization 
of a government by the people will be at hand. 
And of the means to this end, not one would, in 
my judgment, be more effective than an amend- 
ment to the constitution disqualifying the presi- 
dent from re-election. When we consider the pat- 
ronage of this great office, the allurements of 
power, the temptation to retain place once 
gained, and, more than all, the availability a 
party finds in an incumbent whom a horde of 
office-holders, with a zeal born of benefits re- 
ceived and fostered by the hope of favors yet to 
come, stand ready to aid with money and trained 
political service, we recognize in the eligibility 
of the president for re-election a most serious 
danger to that calm, deliberate and intelligent 
political action which must characterize a gov- 
ernment by the people." 

The plain meaning of all this strong lan- 
guage is that every president, m the nature 
of things, will do what he can to bring about 
his own renomination and re-election, even 
in spite of the popular will. If we suppose 
that Mr. Cleveland acted at the dictation of 
Mr. Tilden "s friends and the remnant of the 
independent republicans who gathered to his. 
support, and that he wrote against a second 
term merely to delude the people with the 
idea that he would be content with one tefm, 
and would refrain from seeking, through the 
presidential patronage, to secure a renewal 
of power for himself or for his party, then 
his action was that of a deceitful demagogue. 
If he believed what he said, then he cannot. 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. 



honestly seek a secoud term. He has made 
his condemuatiou so sweeping that he cannot 
himself evade it. He has \>y implication cast 
suspicion on the men of the past who have 
aspired to a second term, and the men of the 
future who may aspire to it, and he cannot 
plead exemption for himself as higher and 
holier than the rest of humanity. In 
deliberately pursuing an end which he 
thinks dangerous to the republic and declares 
attainable only through corrupt means, he 
becomes a transgressor conscious of his 
wrong-doing. Under any interpretation, 
the essence of siich conduct is fraud, and it 
does not soften the ugly aspect of the case 
that Mr. Cleveland, since his election, has 
never called the attention of congress to the 
necessity of a constitiitional amendment, 
which he deemed so essential in the canvass 
of 1SS4. 

EVIL RESULT OF HIS DUPLICITY. 

I am disposed to think that when Mr. 
Cleveland wrote his letter of acceptance he 
did not mean to run for the presidency a 
second time; but the temptations of the 
great office, the intrigues of politicians whose 
fortunes depend upon his continuance in 
power, the anxiety of the South, and, let it 
be said with all diae respect, the natiiral 
desire of the woman whom he has 
married to spend a few more of the 
years of her youth in the high social position 
she now holds, all have united to overcome 
hib resolution. It looks as if he had given 
waj', knowing the meanness of weakness, 
and as if there had been something like a 
breaking down of his manhood, if not of his 
moral nature, in consequence. At any rate, 
through his duplicity in this matter, his 
whole administrntion has become tainted 
with falsehood. 

The chief result was the failure of the 
non partisan policy which the president pro- 
claimed at the outset ; but it did not fail 
until after the most desperate struggle ever 
made by political hypocrisy to keep up ap- 
pearances. 

Mr. Cleveland, just after his nomination 
for the governorship, in 188'2, was 
preparing for an aggressive demo- 
ci-atic canvass and had begun to 



compose a speech upon the ras- 
calities of the republican party, to be deliv- 
ered in New York city, when the revolt 
against Judge Folger, the republican candi- 
date, assumed startling proportions. It be- 
came clear at once that partisanship would 
have to be put in the backgroxind ; and it 
was accordingly thrust aside and remained 
discredited to some extent until long after 
the presidential election. Mr. Cleveland, as 
governor, incurred the enmity of a strong 
faction of his own party, and kept the 
friendship of a strong element of the repub- 
lican party : and when he was chosen presi- 
dent, he had reason to believe that the hos- 
tility of the former would have beaten him, 
had it not been offset by the support of the 
latter, though no doubt democratic defection 
and republican assistance were both greatly 
overestimated. 

It was with full faith in non-partisanship as 
the best policy, and some resentment against 
his own party, that Mr. Cleveland gave to the 
public his letter to George William Curtis, as 
president of the National Ci\'il Service Re- 
form association, dated December 25, 188-1. 
The writing of that letter, after the election 
had been won on the simple issue of the 
maintenance of the civil service law, wa?* 
something like a betrayal of the democracy, 
whether the pledges it contained were free 
will offerings to ReiJublican allies or the re- 
sult of an ante-election bargain with them ; and 
it was plain to disinterested observers that 
the president could not make good his prom- 
ises without giving up all hope of a renomi- 
nation by his own party. 

CIVIL SERVICE PLEDGES. 

Though there are many equivocal phrases 
in the letter, the admirers of the presi- 
dent have no right to ask that it 
shall be interpreted as a piece of 
duplicity, as some of them now do, say- 
ing that there is a mental reservation un- 
derlying it to the effect that the writer does 
not mean to do all that he promises, but all 
that he can get his party to assent to. In 
judging of the letter we must remember 
that the civil service law had been passed 
and was in successful operation, and that 
Mr. Cleveland, as president, would be bound 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. 



by his oath of oflB.ce to enforce it ; therefore, 
pledges were needless as to whatsoever the 
law covered. Moreover, no suggestions 
were made as to fxirther legislation, and 
neither then nor subsequently did Mr. 
Cleveland bring forward a new idea 
in regard to civil service reform, 
or ijropose to crystallize public senti- 
ment on the subject into any new enact- 
ment guiding the executive power in ap- 
pointment, much less into a constitutional 
amendment restricting it. What he pro- 
posed was to be purely personal — a step in 
the way of reform depending upon his own 
discretion and redounding to his own glory ; 
and. therefore, we must take his professions 
in their broadest sense as binding upon him. 
He said: 

' -There is a class of government positions which 
are not within the letter of the civil service 
statute, but which are so disconnected with the 
policy of an administration that the removal 
therefrom of present incumbents, in my opin- 
ion, should not be made during the term for 
which they were appointed, solely on partisan 
grounds, and for the jjurpose of putting in these 
places those who are in political accord with the 
appointing power. 

This is a specific pledge which the adminis- 
tration has broken over and over again. He 
said also: 

' -The lessons of the past should be unlearned, and 
such ofRcials, as well as their successors, should 
l)e taught that efficiency, fitness and devotion to 
public duty are the conditions of their continu- 
ance in public place, and that the quiet and un- 
obtrusive exercise of individual political rights 
is the reasonable measure of their party ser- 
vice." 

This is the statement of a general principle 
which has been ^^olated in both letter and 
spirit so commonly that its observance in any 
quarter wotdd now be regarded as a ctirious 
divergence from established political custom. 
How fairly a man may talk when there is 
not the slightest moral sequence or causality 
between his words and his actions! To speak 
bluntly, the Curtis letter, though its pledges 
may have been honestly meant when made, 
cannot now be regarded as anything better 
til an the first in a series of astonishing false 
pretences. It would be tedious to review 
them all in detail, but let us look at some of 



the most noteworthy. In his inaugural ad- 
dress, March 4, 188.5, Mr. Cleveland said: 

" The people demand reform in the administra- 
tion of the government and the application of 
business principles to public affairs. As a 
means to this end, civil service reform should be 
in good faith endorsed. Our citizens have the 
right to protection from incompetency of public 
employees who hold their places solelj' as the re- 
ward of partisan service and from the corrupt- 
ing influence of those who promise and the 
vicious methods of those who expect such re- 
ward : and those who worthily seek employment 
have the right to insist that merit and competency 
shall be recognized instead of party subservienc5' 
or the surrender of honest i^olitical beliet." 

This declaration, following the promises 
made in the Curtis letter, was clearly in- 
tended as oittlining a general policy, and not 
as a supplemental pledge, after the oath of 
office, to enforce a jjarticular statute. It 
implied a promise, given coram pojiulo; and 
the president falsified it by his subsequent 
action. 

In his letter to Dorman B. Eaton, the ci^^l 
service commissioner, September 11, 1885, 
Mr. Cleveland dwelt upon this theme in the 
same tone, but with an air of righteous sat- 
isfaction which the mere enforcement of an 
established law would hardly jitstify. And 
in his first annual message, December 8, 
1S85, he again dealt unctuously and elo- 
qi;ently with the subject of reform; but he 
called attention to the fact that there had 
been some complaints in regard to remo- 
vals from office, and made this significant 
remark: •• Parties seem to be necessary, and 
will long continue to exist : nor can it be now 
denied that there are legitimate advantages, 
not disconnected with officeholding, which 
follow party supremacy.'" It was natural 
these complaints should be made, in cases 
not covered by the civil service law, after 
the president's non-partisan professions; 
and in the attempt to avoid the consequences 
of his actions as interpreted by his words, 
Mr, Cleveland took a deeper plunge into 
hypocrisy. 

THE PLEDGES BROKEX. 

The pledges given to the people, as to mak- 
ing merit the only test in the public service, put 
an imputation itpou the character of every re- 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. 



7 



publican susiieuded from office, and though all 
such officials expected to be turned out for 
political reasons, few of them were willing 
to be turned out, not simply as partisans, 
but as men who had betrayed a public trust. 
The administration had to oust them ; it did 
not dare to make charges against them; and 
it hated to confess its own deceit and dis- 
miss them with a certificate of good character. 

Issue was joined on the case of George M. 
Diiskin, actornej' of the United States for the 
Northern district of Alabama, whom the 
president suspended July IT, 1885, designating 
John D. Burnett to take his place. On De- 
cember l-t, 1885, he nominated the latter to 
the office; and the senate Jauiaary 25, 1886, 
asked for the papers on file in the depart- 
ment of justice in regard to the matter. On 
January 28th the attorney general, by di- 
rection of the president, refused to submit 
such papers. Febriiary 18th the majority of 
the senate judiciary' committee made an 
elaborate report, maintaining the right to 
ask for papers on file . in the 
government departments, and on 

March 1st the president sent a mes- 
sage to the senate on the subject. He de- 
nied that the papers in the Duskin case were 
in any sense official documents ; he charged 
the senate with a design of reviewing his 
executive action and abridging the presi- 
dential prerogative ; and. finally, he came to 
the real point at issue, that he was making 
suspensions from office in violation of his 
pledges in the Curtis letter, the inaiigural, 
and the firfet annual message, and that siicli 
suspensions cast iipon worthy officials an im- 
putation of misconduct injurious to •■char- 
acter and reputation. ■■ 

The president was irritated into protesta- 
tions. He intimated loftily that there was 
'• a defense against lanjust suspension in the 
justice of the executive," when the only real 
defence was the ])opular belief that he was 
not keeping his word. He said; -'Every 
pledge I have made by which I have placed 
a limitation upon my exercise of executive 
power has been redeemed. ' ' The statement 
was not true when it was made ; though 
many people believed it then ; but now no- 
body woald pretend to believe it. He ac- 



knowledged that he might be mistaken in 
particular cases, but added : ' ' Not a sus- 
pension has been made except it api^eared 
to my satisfaction that the public welfare 
would be improved thereby." How easy 
it must iiave been to convince him on this 
l^oint 1 He said: "The pledges I have made 
were made to the people and to them I am 
resijonsible for the manner in which I have 
redeemed them. " ' The public has a short 
memory, and yet it can scarcely forget how 
the performance has compared with the 
promises. He said : "I have not constantly 
refused to suspend officials and thus incurred 
the displeasure of political friends, and yet 
wilfully broken faith with the people for the 
sake of being false to them. ' ' His political 
friends make no complaint against him on 
this score now ; nay, more, they are so thor- 
oughly satisfied with his zeal that they want 
to elect him for a second term. He said 
that neither ' ' the discontent of party 
friends ' ' nor ' ' the allurement constantly 
offered ' ' by the senate, nor ' ' the threat ' ' 
recently made by that body, would deter 
him from the path leading " to better gov- 
ernment for the people " : To all of which no 
comment is more appropriate than the old- 
fashioned sneer: -'The lady x)rotests too 
much, methinks. " 

It is an amusing fact that the president 
was not content with these misstatements ou 
the issue between him and the senate, but 
threw into this remarkable document a new 
pledge, which he broke not long aftei' in the 
case of the marshal of the District of Colum- 
bia: "'Upon a refusal to confirm I shall not 
assume the right to ask the reasons for the 
action of tlie senate, nor question its deter- 
mination." And it is significant that the 
secretary of the treasury about this time 
agreed with a senate committee that the re- 
moval of collectors of internal revenue would 
not be considered in any way an imputation 
on their official character, which agreement, 
thovigh these officials were not technically 
within the limits of the controversy with the 
senate, let daylight through the presiden tial 
pretences. 

COLLAPSE OF THE POLICY. 

The extraordinary appetite of the people 



s 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. 



for fine professions in the early clays of the 
administration stimulated Mr. Cleveland to 
test still further ■' the undeveloped capabili- 
ties of the vi'ord reform " ' as a refuge for 
the political adventurer. On July 14, 
1886,he issued the formidable order to offlce- 
liolders, which was regarded by his most 
enthusiastic admirers as more than a com- 
pensation for any occasional forgetfulness of 
pre\'ious pledges. It is a fine piece of politi- 
cal idealism, but a few sentences only need 
te quoted: 

• • I deem this a proper time to especially warn 
all subordinates in the several departments and 
all office-liolders under the general government 
against the use of their official positions in at- 
tempts to control political movements in their 
localities. . . . The influence of federal of- 
fice-holders should not be felt in the manipula- 
tion of political primary meetings and nomina - 
ting conventions. The use by officials of their 
positions to compass their selection as delegates 
to political conventions is indecent and unfair, 
and ijroper regard for the proprieties and re- 
quirements of official place will also prevent their 
assuming the conduct of political campaigns. '" 

Of course, no Federal official now pays the 
slightest attention to this order, and every 
one who watches the progress of public 
affairs, knows of instances in his own neigh- 
borhood in which it was violated. In the 
city of Rochester, where I live, the Federal 
officials have made an open fight to prove 
that the administration controls the party, 
and they do not hesitate to talk of their 
victory with fz-ank pride; but even in the 
fall of 1886 the order was disregarded, and 
the hostile critics declared it to be no better 
than a gelatinous fraud. The president, 
however, nettled by the taunts of the 
newspapers, determined to prove his 
good faith by two singularly cheap 
sacrifices. The grateful victims chosen 
were W. A. Stone, attorney of the United 
states for the Western district of Pennsyl- 
vania, and M. E. Benton, attorney of the 
United States for the Western district of 
Missouri, the former a republican who made 
two speeches for his party, without being 
absent a single working hour from his office, 
and the latter a democrat, who had in the 
course of the canvass spoken in derision of 
the president's civil ser\dce reform p r of e s- 



sions, and his opinions on the silver question. 
A more lovely opportunity could not be 
imagined for satisfying party and personal 
feeling, on high moral grounds, and with 
great cheerfulness the president suspended 
Messrs. Benton and Stone for pernicious 
political activity. 

But the result was one of the worst humil- 
iations of his life. The democrats of Mis- 
souri at once grew furious and demanded the 
reinstatement of Mr. Benton; and after 
endeavoring to avoid the issue by arranging 
to give him another office, the president, 
November 16, 1886, wrote an insincere and 
canting letter, restoring that gentleman, on 
high moral grounds, to his post. Then Mr. 
Stone came forward and demanded reinstate- 
ment, presenting a much stronger case for 
lenient treatment than Mr. Benton's, 
and the president, forgetting that hypocrisy 
has its obligations as well as nobility, wrote 
November 23, 1886, another insincere 
and canting letter, severely rebuk- 
ing Mr. Stone and refusing, on 
high moral grounds, of course, to 
reinstate him. No man with a sense of 
humor could have written those two letters 
in one week ; and no man troubled with a 
doubt as to the gullibility of his fellow 
citizens would have mentioned civil service 
reform again after writing them. 

And yet Mr. Cleveland dwelt lightly but 
lovingly on the theme in his second annua 1 
message, December 6, 1886, and it was not 
until the party change in the civil ser^^ce 
was pretty well completed, and the fact 
notorious, that he could forego the familiar 
subject. He had the grace to drop it in his 
third annual message, December 6, 1887. 

THE ELEMENT OF PERSONAL PROFIT. 

In the hope of republican support. Mr. 
Cleveland made his pledges; in the 
necessity for democratic support he 
violated them. He found the cause 
of civil service reform in good con- 
dition; he added nothing to it through 
legislation; he discredited it by his hypo- 
crisy. It is a cause whose success depends 
upon the good faith of all officials and the 
support of both parties; and yet its especial 
champions, the independent republicans, 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. 



jeoparded it by seeking to identify it with 
the political fortunes of one man. Nothing 
was gained by them but a brief delay in till- 
ing the federal offices with democrats ; but 
Mr. Cleveland, through keeping up for a 
time the pretence of not rewarding party 
loyalty, was enabled to make loyalty to him- 
self the condition of appointment, and so be- 
came, as no man for many years has been, 
the absolute master of the democratic organ- 
ization. He played the reformer exclusively 
at the expense of democratic politicians that 
he wanted to get out of his way. For the 
sake of a second term he tried non-partisan- 
ship ; and when he found that the charm 
was broken, and he could no longer conjure 
with it, he fell back on partisanship for the 
sake of a second term. 

THE XEW ISSUE. 

In rearranging the political game it was 
necessary for Mr. Cleveland to identify him- 
self in a speciaj way with some distinctly 
democratic doctrine in order to make the 
issue in his second canvass, to a great extent 
a partisan one. And so, for want of a bet- 
ter, he chose revenue reform as the tradi- 
tional issue on which to go before the na- 
tional convention of his partj' and before 
the country. In this matter, too, he was 
forced by stress of circumstances into cow- 
ardly duplicity. 

The declaration of principles made by the 
national democratic convention of 1884 was 
very cautiously worded, in so far as it dealt 
with the reform of the tariff, as it was the 
opinion of politicians generally that the brief 
demand for '"a tariff for revenue only "" made 
in 1880, had led to the defeat of the democratic 
candidate of that year. General Hancock. Mr. 
Cleveland carefiiUy avoided any allusion to 
the subject in his letter of acceptance; and 
there was a great anxiety throughout the 
canvass to keep democratic speakers and edit- 
ors from discussing it. In some quarters, the 
tariff terror was pitiable. In the inaugural 
address Mr. Cleveland merelj- mentioned the 
tariff demanding ' ' that our sj-stem of revenue 
shall be so adjusted as to relieve the people 
from unnecessary taxation, ha\'ing a due re- 
gard to the iutereajp of capital invested and 
workingmen emploj'ed in American indus- 



tries, and preventing the accumulation of a 
surplus in the treasury to tempt extrava- 
gance and waste. ' ' 

The staiinchest protectionist could not 
quarrel with this statement. In his fii'st 
message Mr. Cleveland said of revenue re- 
duction: 

'• The proposition with which we have to deal 
is the reduction of the revenue received by the 
government and indirectly paid by the people 
from customs duties. The question of free 
trade is not involved, nor is there now any oc- 
casion for the general discussion of the wisdom 
or expediency of a protective system. 

•' Justice and fairness dictate that in any mod- 
ification of our present laws relating to revenue 
the industries and interests which have been en- 
couraged by such laws, and in which our citi- 
zens have large investments, should not be 
ruthlessly injured or destroyed. We should 
also deal with the subject in such a manner as 
to protect the interests of American labor, 
which is the capital of our workingmen : its 
stability and proper remuneration furnish the 
most justifiable pretext for a protective policy." 

A brief statement that there should be some 
reduction on import duties within these limi- 
tations, and that the reduction should be on 
the necessaries of life, followed. Evidently 
from the admission that a protective system 
keeps up wages, and that without it certain 
great industries and interests would be de- 
stroyed, the political evolution of the presi- 
dent was proceeding very slowly. He was 
careful beyond the verge of caution. In the 
second annual message, more space was 
given to the subject, but,although there was 
marked progress in the direction of tradi- 
tional democracy, it was discussed with the 
same timidity, not to say equivocation. Re- 
commending revenue reduction, he threw 
out, to use the phrase of another famous 
political sailor, " an anchor to windward": 

" The relation of 4he workingman to the rev- 
enue laws of the country, and the manner in 
which it palpably influences the queistion of 
wages, should not be forgotten in the justifiable 
prominence given to the proper maintenance of 
the supply and protection of well-paid labor : 
and these considerations suggest such an ar- 
rangement of government revenues as shall re- 
duce the expense of living while it does not cur- 
tail the opportiinity for work, nor reduce the 
compensation of American labor and unfavor- 



JO 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. 



ably affect its condition and the dignified place 
it holds in the estimation of our people." 

The third annual message was devoted 
altogether to tariff reform, and shaped the 
issue for the canvass of ISSS. It is an 
elaborate and powerful argument for tariff 
reduction on free trade lines ; and yet at in- 
tervals the old terror of offending protected 
manufacturers and laborers manifests itself. 
As in various other papers by Mr. Cleveland, 
there are signs of a struggle between two 
minds — a shifting from side to side, as if one 
man were trying to say something bold and 
definite, and another were constantly inter- 
fering with provisos and modifications. For 
instance : 

••Onr progress toward a wise conclusion will 
not be imi^roved by dwelling on the themes of 
protection and free trade. This savors too much 
of bandying epithets. It is a condition which 
confronts us, not a theory. Relief from the con- 
dition may involve a slight reduction in the ad- 
vantages which we award our home productions, 
but the entire withdrawal of such advantages 
should not be contemplated. The question of 
free trade is absolutely irrelevant, and the per- 
sistent claim made in certain quarters that all 
efforts to relieve our people from unjust taxa- 
tion are schemes of the so-called free traders, is 
mischievous and far removed from any consid- 
eration of the public good." 

Of course this wavering affords to the 
weaker brethren some comfort. "It is a 
condition which confronts us, not a theory," 
is a taking phrase, which democi'ats with- 
out the courage of their convictions are foud 
of quoting : but it is a merely rhetorical sub- 
terfuge. The theory lies behind the condi- 
tion, and it makes all the difference in the 
world whether the free trader or the pro- 
tectionist cuts down the revenue from im- 
port duties. So vital is the question of 
theory in the matter that the one might in- 
crease the revenue by reducing tariff rates, 
and the other reduce it by increasing them. 
If it were only a condition which confronts 
us, the simplest and best remedy would be 
to repeal the internal revenue laws. 

COURAGE OR COWARDICE. 

The independent press hailed the annual 
message of December 6, 1887, as a new 
revelation in political economy, praised it as 



a strange manifestation of courageous states- 
manship, and accepted the issue which it 
presented in place of the civil service reform 
policy which had so long been their single 
idea in politics. If Mr. Cleveland's action 
was so important a matter, why did he de- 
lay it so long? Why was he silent in his let- 
ter of acceptance, equivocal in his inaugural 
address, and pusillanimous in his first annual 
message? 

"Why did he not fling himself frankly into 
the fight for revenue reform at the beginning 
of his administration and carry it to a suc- 
cessful issue, instead of waiting until the 
third year, and then urging upon congress, at 
the eve of a national election, action which 
it was hardly possible for it to take? Why 
did it require nearly three years for the 
democratic president to advance beyond the 
position in favor of revenue reform which 
President Arthur held in 1882 ? It is con- 
ceded that the tariff law ought to be recast, 
and that the work ought not to be done in a 
partisan spirit ; and that point Mr. Cleveland 
cunningly urged. Bt;t why did he put the 
matter into such a shape that it would be 
almost impossible to keep partisanship out 
of the discussion of it ? Simply because, at 
the threshold of his first 3'ear, Mr. Cleveland 
did not care for re-election, or hoped to com- 
pass it through non-partisanship ; while at 
the threshold of 1888 he was eager for re- 
election and saw no chance for attaining it ex- 
cept through forcing tariff reform as a party 
issue. And so he took up tariff revision as a 
political charlatan and not as a statesman. 

PEXSION INCONSISTENCY. 

Of course, the president could not hope for 
a renomination or re-elction, except as the 
favorite of the South ; and he has done what 
he could safely do and more than he could 
decently do to preserve the good will of 
that section. I speak with no ani- 
mosity to the South, for the strong- 
est feeling that ever influenced me 
in politics was the wish that the re- 
bellious states might be restored to their 
place in the Union without a rag of political 
disability festering in their wounds; and it is 
only lately that I have bq^n disposed to hold 
the Southern people to strict accountability 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. ii 



for the use of the peculiar political power 
which the South holds iu the Union. I do 
not care to make the charge that Mr. Cleve- 
land was too partial to the Southerners in 
tha bestowal of offices ; or that he was too 
complacent to them in some of the polite ex- 
cuses which he sent for not attending 
Southern festivals. Nor do I think his 
course in vetoing so many pension bills, and 
the bitterness in which many of the veto 
messages were conceived and written, largely 
due to a desire to propitiate the South. There 
was a personal element involved. 

If the president forgets benefits he does 
not forgive injuries, and certain associations 
of Union veterans had attacked him unfair- 
ly, nay. meanly, in the canvass of 1884, and 
he took satisfaction out of the beneficiaries 
of the private pension bills. Many of them 
were fair game ; but the inaccuracy, the 
malice, the harshness verging on brutality, 
with which even deserving claimants were 
treated in some of these veto messages, 
showed that indi\'idual spite, rather than 
any consideration of policy, guided the pen. 
No, it was the president's action on the gen- 
eral pension bills that made his subserviency 
to the South clear. Let us take a passage 
from his second annual message. In the 
course of an argument against special 
pension bills, he said that there was 
inequality, and consequemly injustice, in 
such measures; and in illustration he cited 
the fact that only 13 per cent, of »,000 vet- 
erans supported by charity outside of sol- 
diers' homes, and presiimably without social 
or political influence, were pensioners, while 
as many as 20 per cent, of the whole num- 
ber of men in the service, or their widows, 
were drawing pensions. Touching dependent 
veterans living on local charity, and power- 
less to rush special acts through congress, he 
said : 

" Every consideration and fairness to our ex- 
soldiers, and the protection of the patriotic in- 
stinct of our citizens from perversion and viola- 
tion, point to the adoption of a pension system, 
broad and comprehensive enough to cover every 
contingency which shall make unneee.ssary an 
objectionable volume of special legislation. As 
long as we adhere to the principle of 
granting pensions for service and dis- 



ability as a result of service the allow- 
ance of pensions shoiild be restricted to cases 
presenting these features. Every patriotic 
heart responds to a tender consideration for 
those who, having served their country long 
and well, are reduced to destitution and de- 
pendence, not as an incident of their service, 
but with advancing age or through .sickness or 
misfortune. We are all tempted l>y the contem- 
plation of such a condition to supply reHef. and 
are often impatient of limitations of public duty. 
Yielding to no one in the desire to indulge this 
feeling of consideration, I cannot rid myself of 
the conviction that if these ex-soldiers are to be 
relieved they and their cause are entitled to the 
benefit of an enactment under which relief may 
be claimed as a right, and such relief be granted 
under the sanction of the law. not in evasion of 
it; nor should such worthy objects of care to 
which all are equally entitled be remitted to the 
unequal operation of sympathy or tender mer- 
cies of social and political influence, with their 
unjust discrimiuatons. '■ 

When this was written, the dependent 
pension bill and the Mexican pension bill 
were under consideration in congress. This 
passage was an argument for the former, or 
it was a piece of unaccountable deceit. The 
dependent pension biil was virtually passed 
January 17, 1887, thougn delayed until Jan- 
uary 29th, on accotmt of the senate's hesita- 
tion in acting on the house substitute. It 
provided for a pension for every man that 
served three mouths in any war of the coun- 
try and had come to be dependent upon the 
charity of others for support, 

through no personal fault or vice. 
The measure, though sweeping in its 
terms, was considered as specially designed 
to benefit the Union soldiers of the civil war. 
A strong sentiment had been worked up in 
the North against the policy of it; the 
Southerners, though afraid to oppose it, were 
anxious to have it vetoed : and so the Presi- 
dent disapproved of it Febriiary 11, 1887, in 
a long veto message full of special plead- 
ing. The veto was a popular one, on the 
whole, and Mr. Cleveland, no doubt, took 
satisfaction in shifting the position which he 
had assumed in his previous annual message, 
under an erroneous impression as to the real 
state of public sentiment. 

The Mexican pension bill was passed by 
congress January 17, 1887. It was less dis- 



12 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A SECOND NOMINATION. 



crimiiiatiug within its sphere than the 
depeudent pension bill, since it provided a 
pension for everybody who had served two 
months in the Mexican war, whether depend- 
ent or not, if he had passed the age of 62 
years; and few of the sur^^ving veterans 
could be less than that age. This measure 
had been long in congress, had been fre- 
quently put upon its passage and frequently 
fallen by the way. It was a Southern meas- 
ure, as it provided for the soldiers of a war 
in which the South had been specially inter- 
ested, and in which many Southerners 
had served. This bill the President 
signed. Setting aside all mere quibbling 
about details, it was not possible for Mr. 
Cleveland honestly to approve of one of these 
measures aud veto the other. There was an 
inconsistency in his course so gross that it 
cannot be explained away. Will it do to 
say that he thought the Mexican veterans 
more worthy of help than the Union vete- 
rans of the civil war? Certainly not. Is it 
a good plea that the government should wait 
until a certain proportion of those who need 
its bounty have died off before granting it:-' 
By no means, if we acknowledge the duty of 
aiding them at all. What can we suppose 
then, save that the president thought the 
Southerners in lome way or other should 
have a share of the federal bounty in the 
shape of pensions, or that he was compelled 
to sacrifice his own consistency rather than 
run counter to the Southern will? 

Let any one who doubts the simple mean- 
ing of his acts in regard to these bills con- 
sider the order restoring the rebel battle 
flags, in which the administration plainly 
undertook to pander to what it supposed to 
be Southern sentiment. That action was 
politically evil because it tended to cherish at 
the South the war feeling that the admirers 
of the president had been urging the North- 
ern people to forget ; it was illegal because 
it attempted to dispose of public property 
that the president had no right to touch ; it 
was absurd iuasmiich as it assumed to re- 
turn Confederate flags to states that could not 
l)e regarded as their owners ; it was scan- 
dalous because it put the Union flags in the 
possession of the government in the same 



category with the rebel flags ; and it was dis- 
honestly defended on the false plea that it 
had been the custom of the war department 
to give away the flags. Not less significant 
than the issuing of the order was the presi- 
dent's letter of June 19, 1887, withdrawing 
it in the face of the sudden and furious pop- 
ular protest that was made. That act showed 
that while he would go far to keep the South 
loyal to his fortunes, he was perfectly ready- 
to retreat at the first unmistakable sign that 
he had gone too far for the patience of the 
North. I have too often deplored republi- 
can sectionalism as the evil weakness of an 
otherwise noble party, to condone democratic 
sectionalism. In this, as in other things, 
the duplicity in regard to a second term 
involved subsequent cowardice in opinion 
and policy. 

A WEAK AND WORTHLESS RECORD. 

I shall pursue this discussion no further in 
detail. The reader will see that I have 
dwelt only on those things which the admir- 
ers of the president regard as his peculiar 
glories, and that my argument against his 
renomination is based on what are consid- 
ered his strongest points. I do not care to 
pick out for censure whatever bad appoint- 
ments he has made, or to ridicule his attack 
on journalists, while keeping a court reporter 
to tell how many flsh he caught every day in 
the North woods, or to laugh at his constant 
whining, under criticism, for special cour- 
tesy, though unwilling to treat the motives 
of others with ordinary charity. Let us pass 
over the presidential electioneering trips and 
the artless sjjeeches got up for every impor- 
tant town, out of Appleton's Cyclopaedia. 
Let us lay no emphasis on telephone or on 
real estate scandals : or on petty inconsis- 
tencies like the veto of Mrs. Hunter's pension 
after the approval of Mrs. Hancock's, and 
the increasing of the revenue by signing the 
bill taxing oleomargarine, while clamoring 
for a reduction of the surplus. And let us 
fling the mantle of charity over a weak and 
pompous foreign policy. 

Put the case on broad aud simple grounds. 
Mr. Cleveland, so far as he was the repre- 
sentative of the democracy, went into 
office on the theory that republican adminis- 



AR G UMEiVT A GAINST A SE COND NOMINA TION. 



tration was full of corruptiou, that republi- 
can methods shoixld be c-hanged, and that re- 
publican policy should, in some important 
matters, be reversed. From a party stand- 
point, what is his record ? It is plain as the 
i-esult of his administration that his republi- 
can predecessor could account for the public 
money to a single cent ; that not a repub- 
lican official could be charged with dis- 
honor; that republican methods were 
too good to be discarded, and that 
there was no new policy which a democratic 
administration could adopt and carry 
through. Mr. Cleveland has not said a single 
great thing, or done a single great thing, or 
even conceived of a single great thing since 
March -t, 1885 — except that, after the man- 
ner of many another well-to-do old bachelor, 
he has married a charming young wife. Biit 
that achievement alone does not constitute a 
valid claim to renomination and re-election. 
If he represents the best that democracy can 
do, the republican party is entitled to a new 
lease of power. 

THE PARADISE OF HYPOCRITES. 

And while denying to the administration 
special accomplishment in great matters, it is 
not possible to concede. to it what may be, in 
peacseful times, a better thing in man or gov- 
ernment — general nobility of character. It 
has rendered no service to good government 
save lip service ; and its most marked charac- 
teristic is a certain moral dishonesty that 
rouses in me a feeling akin to disgust. It is 
preeminently the canting administration of 
the republic. Excessive piety and super- 
abundant self-righteousness leak out of it at 
every pore. It drops fine sentiments 
faster than the Arabian trees their medicinal 
gums. It cannot sneeze without a truism, 
or go on a vacation except to slow 
music, or dismiss a fourth-class 
Xjostmaster save with an appeal 
to the eternal verities. It cants in dreams 
and snores pj^eans to that reform which never 
was on laud or sea. One might imagine its 



political hypocrisy studied out of Mach- 
iavelli's "Prince " save for certain crudities 
which characterize it as the natural pro- 
duct of a rich but uncultivated cunning. It 
was a peculiarity of Henry VIII. that the 
pricking of a sensitive conscience always 
prompted him to whatever rascality he set 
his mind upon ; and there is something of the 
same propensity to justify wrong-doing by 
righteous scruples in this administration. It 
does the most commoni^lace act of meanness 
with the air of Curtius leaping into the gulf in 
the Forum. It is like the tribes along the 
Arabian coast, described by Sir John Malcolm 
who " give you the most pious I'easons for 
every villainy they commit ' ' and quote a 
text of the Koran for every transgression. 
Before he became pi-esident, Mr. Cleveland 
was regarded as a blunt, straightforward 
man, of executive ability and honest pur- 
pose, disposed to work much and say little; 
but, as often happens to men exalted to 
rulership, he has degenerated in the face of 
supreme opportunities. He has become a 
poseur, a model letter writer, a maker of 
phrases, a dealer in doiible-ended opinions, a 
sort of political Tartuffe. He keeps on the 
ragged edge of every difficult question, 
and rehearses platitudes as if they 
were profound and original convictions; so 
that one is disposed, after three j'ears of this 
sort of thing, to turn on his heel, like Sir 
Peter Teazle, and exclaim: " Damn your 
sentiments ! ' ' 

In Mr. Cleveland's case we see clearly 
what Mr. Tilden called ' ' the futility of self- 
imposed restrictions by candidates or incum- 
bents; " and I oi^pose his renomination be- 
cause there is nothing in the world to recom- 
mend it save ' ' the availability a party finds 
in an incumbent whom a horde of office-hold- 
ers, with a zeal born of beufits received and 
fostered by the hope of favors yet to come, 
stand ready to aid with money and trained 
politica.l service. ' ' 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



LETTER DATED MAY 26, 1892. 



Under date of May 26. 1888, a letter of mine 
was published setting forth the reasons why 
the democratic ])arty should not renominate 
Mr. Cleveland for the presidency. The letter 
was not written with any notion that it was 
possible to prevent his renomination, then a 
foregone conclusion, but for the purpose of 
stating the case against him, as clearly and 
strongly as might be, before the opening 
of the presidential canvass. It was 
clear that the party was going to com- 
mit the folly of making him its candidate for 
a second time ; it deserved defeat for taking 
such a course ; the prospects of defeat were 
plain, and it was a duty to put a protest on 
record. It seemed as if a rain like that de- 
scribed in one of Pierre Cardinal's sirventes. 
making crazy whomsoever it touched, had 
fallen on the party : and it was fitting that 
one who had not been wetted by the shower 
and still preserved his political senses, should 
speak a word of warning, though the 
drenched lunatics might regard him as a 
fool. 

The event justified the protest. It is now 
the pretence of Mr. Cleveland and his friends 
that the canvass of 1888 was made in full 
expectation of political disaster, and out of 
naere devotion to principle. That genrleman 
said in his speech in Pro\'ideuce on the 2d 
of last April : "It .surely was not policy nor 
expediency that induced us defiantly to carry 
the banner of tarift" reform as we went forth 
to meet a well-organized and desperately de- 
termined army on the disastrous field of 
1 888. ' ' Like most persons who have taken 
pains to avoid the smell of burned gunpow- 
der, Mr. Cleveland is a " brave soldado ' ' in 
his rhetoric, affects a martial and 
military style, and abounds in 



blood-thirsty metaphors; but, disen- 
tangling his meaning from the armies, 
the banners, and the war cries that surround 
and confuse it all through the passage w^here- 
in this sentence occurs, the modest sugges- 
tion meets us that the candidate was all 
right, but that the issue, in the nature of 
things, involved a preliminary reverse. This 
pretence of challenging defeat deliberately 
in 1888 is the sort of afterthought that can 
be spelled with three letters. The issue was 
good enough. It had been with the demo- 
cratic party for more than two generations 
in sunshine and shadow. The trouble lay in 
the forsworn and double-dealing candidate, 
and in the weak and contemptible adminis- 
tration upon whose record the people were 
called to pass judgment. 

The indications are that certain democratic 
politicians intend to nominate Mr. Cleveland 
for a third time, and the old impulse comes 
upon me to make another protest against the 
reiterated and redoubled folly. 

Before beginning this letter I have read 
over that of May 26, 1888, and find noth- 
ing therein to retract or modify. The points 
made have never been refuted. They were 
good against a second nomination of Mr. 
Cleveland, and they are better against a 
third nomination. What was said on that 
occasion may stand, and this letter is simply 
a sequel to that. 

THE DIFFERENCE. 

When Mr. Lincoln was renominated in the 
crisis of the civil war, there was a republi- 
can faction bold enough to challenge his right 
to the honor: and when General Grant, with 
the laurels of his great victories still un- 
withered, claimed a second term, many re- 
publican leaders withstood the policy of 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



15 



conceding it; but not a prominent 
democrat, except one, dared to mur- 
mur against the renomination of Mr. Cleve- 
land, though the times were peaceful, though 
he was committed against a second terna 
in the pre\ious canvass and could be a can- 
didate only in falsehood and dishonor, 
though he began his administration by an at- 
tempt to betraj' his party, and though he was 
about to close it without accomplishing anj*- 
thing for the country. If the independence of 
the republicans savored of ingratitude, the 
subjection of the democrats had in it a touch 
of servility that was not only meaner in it- 
self but more dangerous to our politics. 

BRAGG AND BLARNEY. 

As the renomination of Mr. Cleveland was 
assured before the meeting of the democratic 
national convention at St. Louis. June 5, 
1888, great pains were taken with the .set- 
ting of the stage for the scene ; and yet there 
was an element of burlesque in the perform- 
ance. 

At the democratic national convention in 
Chicago in 1884, the opposition was led by 
Tammany Hall : and it was taken for granted 
that Irish-American democrats as a class 
were hostile to Mr. Cleveland ; so that when 
G-eneral Bragg, of Wisconsin exclaimed: 
' • We love him for the enemies he has 
made ! ' ' the declaration was interpreted as a 
defiance to Tammany Hall and Irish- Amer- 
ican generally, and it was cheered to the 
echo ; for there is more of the old Know- 
Nothmg spirit survi\ing in the democratic 
party than elsewhere. The phrase was a 
bold and potent one ; and the incident made 
some votes for the candidate ; but when the 
ballots of November 4. 1884, were counted 
in this state it was found that Mr. 
Cleveland's plurality of 192,854 in 
1882 has fallen to 1,047, and that even that 
pitiful surplus was tainted with suspicion. 
As Mr. Cleveland and his friends were i;nder 
the delusion that independent republicans 
by the myriad had voted for him, they fell 
into the converse delusion that Irish- Ameri- 
can democrats by the mj-riad had voted 
against him. Resentment at the supposed 
defection kept Mr. Cleveland from granting 
any Federal patronage to Tammany Hall 



and from giving an important position 
to any Irish- Americnn democrat, though 
he was liberal to Germans, Jews, 
Norwegians, and even colored men. 
The class he had favored at the beginning of 
his term as governor he discountenanced as 
president, for Secretary Manning, though 
belonging to it, was not regarded as repre- 
.sentiug it. But at the dawn of another 
presidential canvass there came a sudden 
dread of " the enemies he had made; '" and 
the pains taken to conciliate them were so 
awkward as to be amusing. 

The democratic party then remembered 
the Irish-American, to whom it owes 
so much, as the republican party 
sometimes remembers the negro, 
who owes so much to it. The man 
chosen to preside over the national demo- 
cratic convention was a rejected candidate 
for a cabinet office, Patrick A. Collins, of 
Massachusetts, an Irish- American Catholic, 
formerly president of the national land 
league. The man chosen to present the 
name of Mr. Cleveland to the convention 
was Daniel Dougherty, another Irish-Ameri- 
Qan Catholic; and, to give a still more 
grotesque touch to the affair, that gentle- 
man, who had emigrated from Philadelphia 
to New York and joined Tammaiay Hall, 
presented the candidate in behalf of that 
body. So clumsy an attempt at political 
blarney would not be worth serioiis notice, 
if it were not interlaced with an important 
episode in the presidential canvass. 

THE SOURCE OF ANXIETY. 

The fisheries article of the treaty of 1871 
with Great Britain terminated June 30, 
188.5, and the Canadians, angry because so 
great a source of profit was ciit off, and 
eager to secure new concessions, undertook 
to harass this country into making another 
treaty. They began at once a policy of an- 
noyance and aggression which proved a 
thorn in the side of the Cleveland adminis- 
tration. The convention of October 20, 
1818. having revived through the lapse of 
subsequent agreements, the president asked 
for authority to appoint commissioners 
to meet commissioners from Great Britain 
and Canada to settle the interpretation of 



i6 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



that treaty. Congress refiised to sanction 
such a commission ; but Mr. Cleveland ap- 
pointed one, nevertheless, which met with 
that appointed by Great Britain in Novem- 
ber. 1887, at the city of Washington. And 
as the Canadian cruisers were impudent, un- 
scrupulous, and ugly, there was much public 
interest as to the result of the proposed ne- 
gotiation. 

Though there was no Irish sentiment in- 
volved, and no Irish interest, it suited the 
Salisbury government to bring the irrepres- 
sible Irishman into the negotiation of a fish- 
eries treaty. Joseph Chamberlain, the liberal 
leader, who had turned renegade to his party 
rather than support Mr. Gladstone's measure 
for home rule, was made chief commissioner 
on the part of Great Britain ; and that gen- 
tleman took pains to proclaim before leaving 
England that nothing interfered \\ith the 
friendly relations of Great Britain and the 
United States but Irish hostility, and that he 
was going to Washington for the purpose of 
bra\'ing Irish influence and thwarting Irish 
intrigue. In a speech at Islington, October 
26th, just before sailing, he said, as reported 
in the press despatches : 

■ ■ There had never been a time, during the last 
thirty years, when the Irish in America had not 
been willing to use the privileges conceded to 
them by their adopted country in order to sow 
dissension and promote ill-feeling between 
Great Britain and America. More than once 
they had shown readiness to endanger the best 
interests of their country in order to avenge real 
or fancied injuries. He was not sanguine enough 
to anticipate that on the present occasion they 
would change their pohcy. but he was encour- 
aged by the belief that the vast majority of 
Americans and every Englishman and Scotch- 
in the United Kingdom would regard fratricidal 
conflicts between the two countries as a crime 
of the deepest dye." 

Mr. Chamberlain came, saw, and over- 
came. He was as insinuating and as pen- 
etrating as one of his own patent screws. 
He became a favorite of Washington soci- 
ety and a pet of the administration, was 
engaged to the daughter of the secretary 
of war, and negotiated a treaty in which 
every right belonging to the United States by 
the law of nations was made the siibject 
of special stipulation and bestowed with an 



air ot condescension as a privilege granted 
out of the bounty and beneficence of Great 
Britain. Not much was known as to Mr. 
Chamberlain's social triumphs at Washing- 
ton until after the presidential election, but 
on his return home he could not re- 
strain his exultation because the imaginary 
Irishman, who is supposed by the average 
British statesmen to rule the destinies of 
America, fled from him "like quicksilver:" 
and he boasted that every prominent Ameri- 
can whom he met had assured him in confi- 
dence that his countrymen were opposed to 
home rule for Ireland and detested the Irish 
element in the United States. Had Mr. Cleve- 
land been re-elected, no doubt Mr. Chamber- 
lain would have been over here every year 
since as the son-in-law of the administration, 
challenging the elusive Irishman to tread on 
the tail of his coat: but happily another ruler 
arose which knew not Joseph. 

These things were pleasant enough early 
in 1888; but they became a source of 
anxiety later on when the presidential can- 
vass opened, when the public began to un- 
derstand the diplomatic result of the little 
love feast in which Mr. Chamberlain had 
been the hero, and when the " adverse, per- 
nicious" Irishman might insist on an innings 
at any moment. 

ALL FOR PE.'VCE AND HARMONY. 

The proposed fisheries treaty was signed 
on February 18, 1888, at Washington: and 
on the 20th of that month Mr. Cleveland 
sent it to the senate. In the accompanying 
message he extolled it as a great achieve- 
ment. He rejoiced in delimitation as 
an inestimable privilege, gloried in the free 
navigation of the Gut of Canso as an 
unexpected boon, exulted in the con- 
cession of the right of refuge to American 
vessels in distress, and was touched \Ndth un- 
accustomed gratitude over the benevolence 
of the British commissioners in granting a 
modus Vivendi and restraining the fierce Can- 
adian cruisers in the leash. The following 
passage shows the spirit of the whole docu- 
ment : a bit of gush precedes it about the 
growth of intercourse ' ' with those popula- 
tions who have been placed upon our borders 
and made forever our neighbors, " a foolish 



AR G UMENT A GAINST A THIRD NOMINA TION 



and unhappy phrase for any American poli- 
tician to utter, since sound statesmanship 
looks to the day when they will cease to be 
neighbors and become fellow citizens: 

'• The treaty now submitted to you has been 
framed in a spirit of liberal equity and recipro- 
cal benefits, in the conviction that material ad- 
vantage and convenience are the only permanent 
foundation of peace and friendship between 
states, and that with the adoption of the 
agreement now placed before the senate a bene- 
ficial and satisfactory intercourse between the 
countries will be established, so as to secure 
perpetual peace and harmony. 

"In connection with the treaty here submitted 
I deem it also my duty to transmit to the senate 
a written offer or arrangement in the nature of 
a modus vivendi. tendered after the conclusion 
of the treaty on the part of the British plenipo- 
tentiaries, to secure kindly and peaceful rela- 
tions during the period that may be required for 
the consideration of the treaty by the respective 
governments, and for the enactment of the 
necessary legislation to carry its provisions into 
effect if approved." 

It is necessary to bear these professions in 
mind for comparison. Mr. Cleveland, confi- 
dent in his case at that time, made use of 
the popular prejudice against secret sessions 
of the senate, and asked that publicity be 
given to the whole subject. " I therefore 
beg leave respectfully to suggest that such 
treaty and all correspondence, messages, and 
documents regarding the same as may be 
deemed important to accomplish these pur- 
poses be at once made piablic by yoiir honor- 
able body." This cunning overreached 
itself, for the senate accepted the 
challenge and not only published the 
treaty, but discussed it in open session 
after May 28th. The republican senators 
attacked it with dash and vigor, with ridi- 
cule as well as with serious argument ; and 
the result was that public opinion set 
strongly against it, so that even among 
democrats a feeling of impatience with the 
cowardice of the administration grew up. 
The republican majority of the senate re- 
jected the treaty August 21st, in spite of 
the solemn declaration of certain democratic 
senators, speaking for the administration, 
that such a course would lead to immediate 
war with Great Britain. 



FOR RETALIATION AT RISK OF WAR. 

The presidential canvass was then in full 
swing, and Mr. Cleveland was startled into 
the sudden conviction that the treaty was 
unpopular, and that his subservient foreign 
policy was endangering his re-election. To 
him his personal fortunes are the first consid- 
eration at all times, and with his usual des- 
perate selfishness he made a rapid change of 
front, though that meant the discrediting of 
various democratic senators and the ruin 
of the canvass in Maine, where one of the 
commissioners that negotiated the treaty 
was running for governor with it as 
an issue. "Brethren," said a California 
preacher, as his congregation showed signs 
of restlessness at the first shock of an earth- 
quake, '"why this uneasiness? Let us be 
calm in our reliance upon ProAidence. And 
if we are to die, what better place for death 
is there than this holy house 'i ' ' Just then 
a second shock came, and the preacher re- 
marked, as he took a fiying leap through the 
wmdow : ' ' But outside is good enough for 
me ! " With no less alacrity, at the repeated 
rumble of popular displeasure, Mr. Cleve- 
land skipped out of the little temple of inter- 
national friendship and national meekness, 
in praise of wliich he had raised his 
pious voice. He lost all interest in ' ' perpet- 
ual peace and harmony;" and on August 23d 
he sent to congress a message asking for ampler 
powers to tmdertake retaliation against Can- 
ada. By a resolution passed March 3, 188T, 
congress had given to the president author- 
ity to adopt retaliatory measures, excluding 
Canadian vessels from our ports, and Mr. 
Cleveland had never availed himself of that 
authority. Now, so mild a method suited 
not his new-born zeal. He said : 

" Our citizens engaged in fishing enterprises 
in waters adjacent to Canada have been .sub- 
ject to numerous vexatious interferences and 
annoyances: their vessels have been seized 
upon pretexts which appeared to be entirely 
inadmissible, and they have been otherwise 
treated by the Canadian authorities and of- 
ficials in a manner inexcusably harsh and op- 
pressive.'" 

After a slight reference to the rejected 
treaty in the way of excuse and justification, 
he declared in favor of the policy of retalia- 



iS ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



tiou. .saying: "I am not unmindful of the 
gravity of the responsibility assumed in 
adopting this line of conduct, nor do I fail in 
the least to appreciate its serious consequen- 
ces." In a word, the ambitious demagogue, 
after committing himself to a policy of con- 
cession and finding it unpopular, was eager 
to risk war in order to recover lost ground. 
He added : 

•■ Plainly stated, the policy of national retalia- 
tion embraces the infliction of the greatest harm 
upon those who have injured us, with the least 
possible damage to ourselves. There is also an 
evident propriety, as well as an invitation to 
moral support, found in visiting upon the of- 
fending party the same measure or kind of 
treatment of which we complain, and as far as 
possible within the same lines. And above all 
things the plan of retaliation, if entered upon, 
should be thorough and vigorous. These con- 
siderations lead me at this time to invoke the aid 
and counsel of the congress and its support in 
such further grant of power as seems to me nec- 
essary and desirable to render effective the 
policy I have indicated." 

Mr. Cleveland, after this ponderous re- 
statement of the doctrine of "an eye for an 
eye and a tooth for a tooth, " " went on to ar- 
gue at great length that the pro^^sions of the 
treaty of 1871 no longer stgod in the way of 
retaliation, and he interspersed the argument 
with aspersions on the unneighborly and un- 
friendly conduct of Canada. In conclusion 
he said: 

" The course I have outlined, and the recom- 
mendations made,relate to the honor and dignity 
of oxir country and the protection and preserva- 
tion of all our people. A government does but 
half its dutv when it protects its citizens at 
home and permits them to be imposed upon and 
humiliated by the unfair and overreaching dis- 
po.sitiou of other nations." 

The republican majority in the senate, 
which had refused to be frightened into 
adopting the treaty, refused to be cajoled 
into granting Mr. Cleveland's trucadent de- 
mand for retaliation. 

Is it possible to regai\l the message of 
February '2Uth, and that of August 23d, as 
the work of an honest man ? Certainly not. 
The attitude of Canada had not changed, 
save for the better ; and if there was any sin- 
cerity in the first message, the second was 
the device of a politician in soi-e distress ; 



If the first represented the genuine policy of 
the administration, the second was a 
fraud to catch votes. Considering the 
pitiful trick after a lapse of four years 
of peace, one is inclined to wonder that it 
could deceive anybody, but the most success- 
ful devices in history are by no means the 
most adroit ; and this one served its turn. 
The mass of democrats refused to pry into 
motives or go back six months for compari- 
sons ; and they gloried in the last message as 
a bold defiance. The popularity of the ad- 
ministration, which had been on the wane, 
seemed to revive. There was partisan gain 
at the cost of national disgrace ; the promise 
of personal prosperity for official dishonor. 

THE MURCHISON LETTER. 

But an ingenious and unscrupulous repub- 
lican in California hit upon a device that put 
Mr. Cleveland's fortimes once more in jeop- 
ardy. Representing himself as an American 
citizen of English birth, he wrote a letter 
under the name of Charles F. Murchison to 
the English minister, Sackville-West, asking 
for information as to the real attitude of the 
a'dministration. The letter was dated Po- 
mona, Cal., September i, 1888. It began 
with a statement that many naturalized 
Englishmen had been strongly in favor 
of Mr. Cleveland, because his admin- 
istration had been "so favorable and 
friendly toward England, so kind in not 
enforcing the retaliation act passed by 
Congress, so sound on the free trade question 
and so hostile to the dynamite school of Ire- 
land. ' ' But the recent message of Mr. Cleve- 
land on the fisheries question, it continued, 
had filled the writer and his friends -^ith 
alarm. 

•' I am unable to understand for whom I shall 
cast my ballot, when but one short month ago 
I was sure Mr. Cleveland was the man. If 
Cleveland was pursuing a new policy toward 
Canada temporarily only, and for the sake of 
popularity and continuance in his oflace four 
years more, but intends to cease his policy when 
his re-election is secured in November, and again 
favor England's interest, then I should have no 
further doubts but go forward and vote for 
for him." 

The letter, after dwelling on the probable 
importance of a few votes, went on : 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



^9 



' ' As you are the f ovmtaiu head of knowledge 
on the question, and know whether Mr. Cleve- 
land's present policy is temporary only, and 
whether he will, as soon as he secures another 
term of four years in the pi'esidency, suspend it 
for one of friendship and free trade, I apply to 
you personally and confidentially for informa- 
tion which would jiut me at rest myself, and, if 
favorable to Mr. Cleveland, enable me on my 
own responsibility to assure many of our 
countrymen that they would do England ser- 
vice by voting for Cleveland, and against the 
republican system of tariff." 

The British minister may have been foolish 
to answer this letter, but he thought it 
genuine, i>iit faith in its promise of secrecy, 
and ^vrote a reply which it is well to give iu 
full : 

Beverly, Mass., Sept 13, 1888. 

Sir : I am in receipt of your letter of the -tth 
instant, and beg to say that I fully appreciate 
the difficulty in which you find yourself in cast- 
ing your vote. You are probably aware that 
any political party which openly favors the 
mother country at the present moment would 
lose its popularity, and that the party in power 
is fully aware of this fact. The party, however, 
is, I believe, desirous of maintaining friendly 
relations with Great Britain, and is still as 
desirous of settling all questions with Canada 
which have been unfortunately reopened 
since the rejection of the treaty by 
the republican majority in the senate, and 
by the president's message to which you allude. 
All allowances must therefore be made for the 
political situation as regard.s the presidential 
election thus created. It is, however, irupossi- 
ble to predict the course which President Cleve- 
land will pursiie in the matter of retaliation 
should he be re-elected ; but there is every rea- 
son to believe that, upholding the position he 
has taken, he will manife.st a spirit of concilia- 
tion in dealing with the question involved in his 
message. I enclose an article from the New 
York Times of August 22d. and remain. 
Yours faithfully. 

L. S. Sackville-West. 

The thing that strikes one who reads this 
letter now is the truth and simplicity of it, 
iu every sentence, separately, and as a whole. 
It was true that a ' ' party which openly 
favored the mother country ' ' iu the contro- 
versies then existing would lose popularity. 
It was true that the party in power, which 
had been favoring the mother country, was 
afraid to avow its policy any longer. It was 



true that the suddeu hostility to Canada was 
a mere pretence to cover the rebuked sub- 
serviency to Great Britain. It was true 
that Mr. Cleveland meant nothing by his re- 
taliation message but to deceive his fellow 
citizens into voting for him. Many men may 
have been hoodwinked at the time, btit it is 
safe to say that there is no one oiitside of the 
lunatic asj-lums to-day who is fool enough to 
take any other view than the one Sackville- 
West took. 

Moreover, the British minister clearly 
wrote in no critical spirit. He wanted to 
favor the administration, to excuse it, to 
justify it. as far as might be. He stated 
facts as he judged them to be, but he gave 
no advice about voting, and interfered in no 
way with American politics, though what he 
said, considering the character of his cor- 
respondent's questions, might be taken as an 
encouragement to vote the democratic ticket. 

JEOPARDIXG THE XATIOX. 

The pectiliar force of the Murchison letter 
and the answer to it lay in the accuracy with 
which they siiggested the real attitude of 
the administration. In seeking excuses for 
Cleveland's knavery they exposed it. People 
who were deceived by the clumsy retaliation 
message, were precisely the sort to be unde- 
ceived by the artful suggestions of Murchi- 
son and the artless siinuises of the 
British minister, and they were not 
slow to manifest their distrust. The 
moss-back democrat, troublea with a lin- 
gering doubt of Mr. Cleveland s conversion 
miittered with Sir Anthony Absolute : • ' I 
thought it was damned sudden!" The lead- 
ers of the party fell into a panic, and the 
usual needless anxiety about the Iri.sh-Ameri- 
can vote, which no indignity or neglect seems 
to drive away from the democracy, began to 
worry the politicians. As the rumors of de- 
fection spread there was a clamor for the 
punishment of the British minister, and the 
frightened administration demanded his 
recall, and finally, to make good 
a fraud, determined upon an in- 
jtistice and dismissed him! To un- 
derstand the motives that influenced Mr. 
Cleveland to take this step it is only neces- 
sary to recall a single incident. He attended 



20 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD ABOMINATION 



a great meeting in New York near the close 
of the canvass, and encountered there Pat- 
rick A. Collins and John Boyle O'Reilly. 
They told him. so the story ran, that votes 
were tailing away rapidly on account of the 
hesitation to dismiss Sackvalle-West. and 
■on his return to Washington he made this 
explanation. October 29th. as to what took 
place at the interview — and this promise ; 

'• The letter of Lord Sackville was only briefly 
referred to. I brought the matter up myself, 
and took occasion to assure them that they 
would have no faiilt to find with what had been 
done and the future course to be pursued in the 
matter. I told Mr. Collins and Mr, O'Reilly 
that I thought that the people hardly regarded 
me as a coward in those matters, and, when the 
facts in the case should be known, the people 
of the nation would be satisfied with the course 
of the state department." 

On the same day the secretary of state 
Avrote his letter dismissing Sackville-West. 
The right to dismiss him as an unacceptable 
person was clear: but the pretence put for- 
ward for dismissing him was a false one ; 
and the argument in support of it does not 
ri.se to the level of an honest man's contempt. 
It is sad to think that Thomas Francis 
Bayard put his name to such a production : 
but everybody brought into close relation 
with Mr. Cleveland is required, sooner or 
later, to do something in his service that 
tends to degradation. The main accusation 
against the British minister was this : 

"That under the correspondent's assurance 
of secrecy in which the minister concui'red by 
making his answer • private. ' he undertook to 
advi.se a citizen of the United States how to ex- 
ercise the franchise of suffrage in an election 
close at hand for the presidency and vice-presi- 
dency of the United States ; and through him, 
as the letter suggested, to influence the votes of 
many others.'' 

Mr. Cleveland repeated this charge even 
more harshly in his last annual message. 
There is not a word of truth in it. No adA-ice 
ab(mt voting is given in the letter of the Brit- 
ish minister: and he was not dismissed for 
inaking a statement secretly that might lead 
English -born citizens to vote for Mr. Cleve- 
land, Imt for making a statement secretly 
which, when published, might lead Irish-born 
citizens to vote against Mr. Cleveland. We 



have had presidents before who, as candidates 
for re-election, were under temptation, but 
never one who stooped so low as this. The 
negotiation of the fisheries treaty was weak- 
ne.ss ; the sending of the retaliation message 
to congress was demagogism; the dismissal 
of the British minister on a false plea 
was little short of direct villainy. As we 
fling aside the last link in this chain of 
shameful circumstances, no doubt remains 
that Mr. Cleveland, to secure his election, 
would have stopped at nothing, not even 
provoking a war with England. He rolled 
himself and the laresidential office in the 
gutter at the feet of ' ' the enemies he had 
made. ' ' 

THE INSULT TO CHINA. 

Is it necessary to illustrate further the dis- 
position of the administration to make use of 
its responsibilities for electioneering pur- 
poses? Take the case of China. There was 
a desperate struggle between parties in 1S88 
for the Pacific states.especially for California, 
which lay at the western extremity of the 
rainbow that spanned the democratic can- 
vass, and each endeavored to outdo the 
other in zeal for the exclusion of the 
Chinese, who are so obnoxious there. On 
March 1st the senate passed a resolu- 
tion asking the president to negotiate 
a treat.y with China providing that no 
Chinese laborer should enter this country, 
and such a treaty was negotiated and siib- 
mitted March 17th. The senate amended it 
by adding a provision that Chinese laborers 
formerly resident in this country and hold- 
ing certificates of such residence shoiild' be 
excluded if attempting to return. The treaty 
was then approved as amended, and legisla- 
tion for carrying it into effect was adopted. 
On Sunday, September 2d. after the treaty 
as amended had been submitted to the Chi- 
nese government for ratification, there came 
a groundless report in the press despatches 
from London to the effect that 
that government had rejected the 
treaty. That day, according to 
press despatches from Washington, the late 
William L. Scott, member of congress from 
Pennsylvania, the confidential friend of Mr. 
Cleveland';'^pent some time at the White 



AR G UMENT A GAINST A THIRD NOMINA TION. 



House: and on Monday he introduced in 
the hotise of representatives a bill for the ex- 
clusion of all Chinese laborers whether with 
or without certificates. - It was represented 
as an administration measure, prepared with 
the personal cooperation of the president. It 
dealt with the subject matter of the 
treaty then awaiting the approval or 
disapproval of the Chinese govern- 
ment, and it was designed to show the 
people of California that Mr. Cleveland was 
the alert and watchful foeman of the 
' ' heathen Chinee, ' ' for whom Mr. Harrison 
was supposed to cherish some remnant of 
Christian consideration. The republicans, 
of course, were afraid to oppose the meastire, 
and it passed the house of representatives 
without a division. It was disciissed at 
some length in the senate and passed that 
body September 7, by a vote of thirty-seven 
to three, no less than thirty-six senators 
being absent. There was a motion to recon- 
sider, as some of the senators had 
the grace to be ashamed of this act, 
and Senator Sherman said in the debate on 
the subject, September 10th, that he had al- 
lowed the measure to be hurried through 
the senate because he supposed the presi- 
dent had accurate and correct information 
that the treaty negotiated with China would 
not be ratified. Knowing then that no such 
information had been received, he 
favored a reconsideration of the question. 
as he regarded the passage of the 
bill as a violation of all honorable precedent. 
' • It is, " he said, ' ' a departure from the 
u.sages of civilized nations. It is a departure 
from all considerations of national honor. ' ' 
The motion to reconsider failed by a %'ote of 
'20 to 21 ; and after some well-managed delay, 
the bill was sent to the president, and he aia- 
proved it October 1st, the Chine.se govern- 
ment in the meantime ha^^ng rejected the 
treaty, and so relieved him of the necessity 
of A'etoing his own measure or signing it 
while the fate of the treaty was still in doubt. 
The republicans, with a few honorable 
exceiJtions, played a cowardly part in this 
transaction: but it has been asserted 
often and never denied that the original re- 
sponsibility for the unseemly haste in intro- 



ducing the measure lay with Mr. Cleveland. 
Could Dennis Kearney, acting in any official 
capacity, with the national honor in his 
keeping, have done a meaner thing? 

These incidents are set forth in detail to 
show that the Cleveland adniiuistratii>n was 
prompt to betray national interests for parti- 
san ends in an important political canvass: 
and they lead to the conclusion that the man 
who was at the head of that administration 
is not fit be intrusted with the responsibili- 
ties of president again. 

THE BELATED TARIFF POLICY. 

Of course the great issue in the canvass of 
1888 was tariff reform. Four years before 
that subject was kept in the background. 
Mr. Cleveland, previous to his first nomina- 
tion, told T. C. Crawford that •• he didn't 
know a damned thing about it" : he made no 
allusion to it in his first letter of acceptance, 
and he did not take it up in earnest until the 
third year of his presidential term. Though 
civil service reform, which had been the great 
theme of 1884, had lost ground, it was set 
aside in 1888 with a mere passing allusion. It 
had served its turn in helping the professional 
reformers into office : it had lost its popular- 
ity and they had no further use for it, and 
hardly cared to keep up even a decent show 
of sham devotion. The new universal polit- 
ical solvent had taken its place. It was 
tariff reform, and that alone, which was to 
purify our civilization, pull down the rich 
and exalt the lowly, wipe away all tears 
from all eyes — and last, but not least, give 
them a new lease of powder. 

No doubt the policy of the Cleveland ad- 
ministration on this civiestion was first shaped 
by Daniel Manning, secretary of the treasury, 
in his report dated December (j, 1886. It 
was a masterly argument for revenue reform 
on free trade lines : and members of the staff 
of the Worlds Consule Planco, have their 
own opinion as to who wrote it. Few pub- 
lic documents have been more generally 
praised; and the reception it met with 
probably emboldened Mr. Cleveland to 
adopt its positions a year later, when 
it became necessary to do something on 
which to appeal to the democratic party for 
a renomination. But he followed Mr. Man- 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



niug's lead with some misgivings and based 
his demaud for tariff reform, not on the 
evils arising out of a protective system, but 
on the evils arising out of an excess of reve- 
nue and the accumulation of the surplus. 
This pretext was considered very clever at 
the time ; but it is never wise to substitute 
an incident in a controversy for the real 
points at issue. 

THE SURPLUS. 

There was, of course, a surplus in the 
treasury after providing for the regular ex- 
peuditiire of the government and for the 
requirements of the sinking fund; but, after 
all, it was oulj- a siirplus in a technical sense. 
The country owed a heavy f auded debt and 
had outstanding .?;3-t6,000,000 of unfunded 
debt in the shape of legal tender 
notes: the land is new, and there were 
many public works that might be under- 
taken ; there were harbors and rivers 
to improve ; there was a navy to be built ; 
there were coast defences to be provided. 
It was folly, therefore, to worry about 
the surplus as a thing bad in itself if there 
was any method in which it could be spent 
to advantage. At the very beginning of the 
Cleveland administration the ablest demo- 
crat in the country, Samuel J. Tilden, saw 
the danger of hoarding the surplus and mak- 
ing it a political issue, when there were good 
uses to which it might be put. Remember- 
ing that we were in no condition to risk a 
quarrel on the sea, or defend New York, 
Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New 
(Jrleaus. and other great seaport 
cities from foreign attack, he wrote his 
famous letter dated December 1, 1885, to 
John G. Carlisle, speaker of the house of 
representatives. He showed that a great 
mass of population, of wealth, of business 
lay exposed at various points along the sea- 
coast, and that even a weak nation, with a 
few strong ships, might force a quarrel on 
us, destroy five thousand million dollars' 
worth of property, or lay enormous tribute 
by way of ransom. He urged spending 
the surplus in fortif jing our seaports. He 
said : 

•' In considering the state and management of 
the public revenues, the subject involves the 



questions whether we shall extinguish the sur- 
plus by reducing the revenue, or whether we 
shall api)ly the surplus to payments on the pub- 
lic debt, or whether we shall seize the occasion 
to provide for our seacoast defences, which have 
been too long neglected. I am of the opinion 
that the latter is a paramount necessity which 
ought to precede the reduction of the revenue, 
and ought also to precede an excessive rapidity 
in the payment of the public debt 

' ' The present time is peculiai-ly favorable for 
providing for this great national necessity, too 
long neglected. Not only does the surplus in 
the treasury supply ample means to enable us to 
meet this great public want without laying new 
burdens upon the people, but the work can now 
be done at a much lower cost than has ever be- 
fore been possible. The defensive works would 
consist almost entirely of steel and iron. These 
materials can now be had at an unprecedentedly 
low price. A vast supply of machinery and of 
labor called into existence by a great vicissitude 
in the steel and iron industries offers itself to 
our service. We should have the satisfaction of 
knowing that while we are availing ourselves of 
the supplies which would ordinarily be unat- 
tainable, we are setting in motion important in- 
dustries and giving employment to labor in a 
period of depression." 

In other words, he set forth as the duty 
of the democratic party the spending of the 
surplus for a great public purpose. In his 
judgment revenue reduction and the antici- 
pation of bond purchases could wait until a 
proper system of coast defences was con- 
structed. If the scheme which he outlined 
had been adopted, the republican party 
would have been compelled to acquiesce in it, 
the administration would have achieved at 
once a reputation for prompt and patriotic 
action, the patronage incident to large ex- 
penditures would have been a source of 
popularity, a great work would have been 
accomplished, and the democracy might have 
remained in power for years. 

The policy of hoarding the surplus, which 
Mr. Tilden did not think worthy of consid- 
eration, Mr, Cleveland adopted. He con- 
sented, with reluctance and under great 
pressure, to apply a portion of the surplus 
to the payment of the public debt, affecting 
to doubt the authority of the secretary of 
the treasury in the premises; and it was not 
until his last vear in office that he advocated 



ARG UMENT A GAINST A THIRD NOMINA TION. 



decisively the reduction of the revenue; but, 
as the senate was against the proposed 
measure for a reform of the tariff, 
it was clear that no reduction by that 
means could take jilace even then. This 
point must be kept clearly in mind. The 
Cleveland administration was unwilling to 
use the surplus to diminish the public debt ; 
it delayed any effort to reduce the revenue ; 
it refused to undertake the construction of a 
system of coast defences, and to spend the 
surplus for the nation's security. It simply 
hoarded the superabundant money. This 
was the worst conceivable course to take. 
There might be something said in behalf of 
every other policy, but nothing to excuse 
hiding the surplus in the treasury as an old 
woman hides her coins in a .stocking. Mr. 
Cleveland described the evils of the financial 
policy of his administration with something 
of his usual exaggeration in his message of 
December 6th, 1887: 

'• The public treasury, which should exist only 
as a conduit conveying the people's tribute to 
legitimate objects of expenditure, becomes a 
hoarding place for money needlessly withdrawn 
from trade and the people's use, thus crippling 
our national energies, suspending our country's 
develepment, preventing investment in produc- 
tive enterprises, threatening financial disturb- 
ance and inviting schemes of public plunder." 

Why did the administration adopt so in- 
iquitous a policy ? There were several rea- 
sons. The accumulation of the surplus car- 
ried with it an idea of economical manage- 
ment, and it formed a vantage ground from 
which to inveigh against extravagance. It 
furnished an excuse for tariff reform to men 
too cowardly to take up the policy on its 
merits. It gave men closely connected with 
the administration money influence and the 
opportunity of making vast profits out of the 
piablic funds without \nolatiug the law. At 
times there was close to 860,000,000 of the 
surplus lent to banks "without interest." 
Mr. Cleveland gravely stated his disapproval 
of such a policy, in a general way, but ex- 
cused the resort to it as '"a temporary ex- 
pedient to meet an urgent necessity. " Of 
course millions of money are not .scattered 
around in this way on purely altruis- 
tic motives, and men identified 



with the administration who went to Wash- 
ington poor were ranked as millionaii'es 
within a year after they left the capital. 
And whatever else the movement for the re- 
nomination of Mr. Cleveland maj' have lacked, 
it has never languished for want of money. 
There was a deal of talking about public 
office as a public trust ; but, unless all signs 
fail, it was made a private El Dorado. 

The Cleveland administration heaped up 
the surplus, deplored its existence, talked 
about reducing it by tariff reform, and lent 
it out ' ' without interest. ' ' The Harrison 
administration has spent it for public uses 
and prevented such accumulation in the 
future by cvitting down the revenue. The 
surplus, therefore, is gone ; and so much of 
the canvass of 1888 as was based on it is 
gone with it. It is no longer a condition 
which confronts us but a theory. And, as- 
suredly, if the existence of the surplus was 
so great an evil as the democrats declared 
four years ago, the Harrison administration, 
in doing away with it, has solved the only 
dilficiilty about which the Cleveland admin 
istration professed to be worried. 

Had Mr. Cleveland been re-elected, rev- 
enue reduction on either free trade or pro- 
tection lines would have been impossible 
with the executive and at least one branch 
of congress at variance. The surplus would 
have kept on increasing: the banks would 
have had the use of the public money with- 
out interest: and certain politicians, who 
grew rich during the first term, would have 
grown far richer during the second. 

THE PROPOSED MEASURE. 

The practical measure of relief which rep- 
resented in a specific form the democratic 
tariff policy was the Mills bill, passed by 
the house of representatives July 2 1st. It 
had some good points and some bad ones, 
and may be fairly described as ' • ower bad 
for blessing and ower gude for banning, 
like Rob Roy. " It is difficult to say whether 
it would have increased or diminished the 
revenue if it had become a law. 
The most noteworthy thing about it 
was the fact that it left a heavy 
protective duty on sugar, a great Southern 
staple, and maintained that tax, therefore, 



?^ 



ARGU3IENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



which contributed far more than any other 
to the growing surplus. To make sugar 
free woitld have cut down the customs re- 
ceipts at a single stroke by a sum equal to 
the reduction sought in the whole measure 
and it would have cheapened to every home 
in the country one of the necessaries of life. 
The McKinley bill, which became a law two 
years later, adopted that policy which has 
served in part to cover a multittide of sins. 

THE COURSE OF DISCUSSION. 

But while the demand for tariff reform 
was made on the pretext of a surplus, and 
while the measure for carrying out the re- 
form was not altogether true to free trade 
principles in its details, the arguments for 
the movement took a wider scope. They 
were of every grade, from that of expedi- 
ency to that of principle — from the plea for 
incidental protection to that for absolute 
free trade. It is hardly worth while to con- 
sider Mr. Cleveland's utterances at that pe- 
riod seriously. They were too eqitivocal for 
discussion. In his letter of acceptance, Sep- 
tember 8. 1888, he rehearsed the stock argit- 
ment for free trade, btit nearly every one of 
them was followed by some modification or 
pi-oviso in favor of protection, and the 
writer, like a ferryraan, kept crossing from 
one side to the other and landing on neither. 
It is easy to see that he was in no com- 
fortable frame of mind, and a perusal of 
the letter leads one to put faith in the story 
that he made an effort to hedge before the 
democratic national convention, and sent his 
confidential agent to induce that body to 
adopt the declaration of the Chicago con- 
vention of 1884 on this subject and avoid any 
step in advance. It took the defeat on the 
tariff reform issue to settle his opinions, at 
least until the convention of 1892. But it 
may be worth while to say a word as to the 
general discussion that characterized the 
canvass. 

It has been called fondly ' ' the campaign 
of education; '" but very often it seemed, in 
the cotirse of it, more like the campaign of 
misinfoi-mation. The assertions on both 
sides were commonly inaccurate, and very 
seldom got beyond half truths at the best. 
The alignments were nearly always fallacies. 



The whole spirit of the discus.sion 
was false and exaggerated. It was 
like the conduct of a lawsuit in 
which the lawyers on each side main- 
tain what is untrue by the most unscrupu- 
lous methods, and out of the clash of their 
injustice it is expected that substantial jus- 
tice will come. The process is perhaps the 
only one for getting at practical results in 
politics; but there are occasions when it 
seems to work under special disadvantage, 
and the settlement of an old controversy in 
political economy is one of them. It is apart 
from the purj^ose of this letter to enter upon 
any discussion of this world- worn theme. To 
either system, free trade or protection, the 
business of the country adapts itself. With 
either, public sentiment, unexcited by politi- 
cal discussion, would be inclined to deal in a 
leisurely way; and probably sudden change 
would involve for a time something of com- 
mercial derangement and disaster. But the 
influence of both has been greatly magnified 
in all political convasses. In that of 1888 it 
was asserted that protection is a violation of 
the principles of the Christian religion ; that 
it is unconstitutional ; that it is robbery ; that 
it plunders the poor for the benefit of the 
rich ; that it raises the prices of all commodi- 
ties; that it tends to retard natural develop- 
ment ; that it leads to the formation of trusts : 
that it causes agricultural depression ; that it 
multiplies strikes; in a word, that all evil 
things that have occurred for a quarter of a 
century, 

•• Fetch from false Mowbray their first head and 
spring. ' ' 
Its malign influence was traced every- 
where, from the failure of the peach crop in 
New Jersey to a ghost dance among the 
Sioux Indians. On the other hand, it was 
maintained that every gain in the lapse of a 
generation had its origin in the protective 
system. The rapid increase of the country 
in wealth and poiDulation, the advance in 
industrial arts, the progress in science, the 
multiplication of the comforts and the lux- 
uries of life, were all atti-fbuted to its benign 
power. The sunlight that shone on the 
wheatfields of Minnesota was its gentle 
agent; the breeze that rustled amid the 



ARG UAIENT A GAINST A THIRD NOMINA TION 



^5 



corn on the prairies of Illinois was its rapid 
messenger; and the raindrops that glit- 
tered on the grape leaves of California 
were sprinkled from the hyssop of its benedic- 
tion. 

There is no issue more difficult to under- 
stand than that between free trade and pro- 
tection ; none on which men are so apt to be 
misled bv mere glimpses of light ; none on 
which general statements are so subject to 
particular exception; none on which illustra- 
tratious from recent history are so deceptive 
unless drawn with critical discrimination; 
none on which the honest inquirer is so liable 
to change his mind. Discussing it is like 
tilting at a qviintain. The slightest variation 
to right or left in the lance "s stroke swings 
round the whole subject, and the assailant, 
while passing on to apparent victory, finds 
himself unhorsed by some reactionary argu- 
ment. The protectionist as.serts that protec- 
tion insures high wages : but the wages are 
much higher in free trade England 
than in protected Germany. The free 
trader asserts that the duty is 
added to the cost of the article, 
and that protection makes products dearer — 
which may be true as to particular things 
for limited periods; but prices on many pro- 
tected articles have fallen rapidly in this 
country during the last twenty-five years. 
The ijrotectionist avers that his system is for 
the benefit of the workman; but it has 
helped capitalists to amass millions. The 
free trader asserts that protection robs the 
poor: but the masses of the people in the 
United States are prosperous, intelligent and 
happy. I need not multiply instances of 
fallacy on either side ; but these illustrations 
serve to show the folly of forcing every 
event into relation with free trade or protec- 
tion, simply because they form a political 
issue for a presidential canvass. There are 
scores of elements apart from either that 
have determined modern indiistrial progress, 
such as the multiplication of machinery, 
the employment of new natural forces, the 
adoption of economic methods, the increase 
of capital and the curious facility in the con- 
centration and combination of it, and the 
improvement in transportation. I am now, 



and have been for years, in an humble way, 
an advocate of tariff reform, and laughed as 
a boy at the pretension that protection was 
to renew the golden age ; and it was some- 
thing of a surpri.se to me when the free 
traders took up in 1888 the prophetic strain 
of their opponents in IStiO. The most that 
can be said for the system of hdssez fa ire i& 
that it gives a scope to natural influences; 
but not a few of my party friends magnified 
it on a sudden into a mysterious and benefi- 
cent policy that was to change the face of 
society, if not that of nature. The familiar 
old democratic doctrine was transformed 
into a sort of political deity. We were 
asked to hail the new Pollio and sing how 
the goats would come home with distend- 
ed udders of theii- own accord to be milked, 
how the serpent would perish and the poison 
lose its venom ; how the blushing grape 
should hang from the wild thorn ; how the 
rams would choose their pasturage to nour- 
ish fleeces of purple, and the lambs crop 
herbs to dye their wool a saffron yellow — ac 
toto surgef gens aurea mundo! But conspic- 
uous beyond any mere democratic zeal was 
the enthusiasm of the recent republicans. 
They had belonged to the party of protection 
for nearly thirty years: they had left it in 
devotion to civil service reform which they 
made haste to abandon when free trade was 
declared unto them ; and as the tariff refonn 
policy was brought up with shouting and 
with the sound of the trumpet, they went 
leajjing and dancing with all their might, 
like David before the ark. And after the 
manner of the Hebrew poet and the Scottish 
witches they paid little attention to decorum : 
They reeled, they set. they crossed, they cleekit, 
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit. 
And coost her duddies to the wark, 
And linket at it in her sark, 

THE DISASTER. 

But, alas, even their bacchantic fury or 
pious fervor, call it which you will, was of 
no avail, and the deznocratic party was 
beaten. The pluralitj' of Mr. Cleveland in 
Connecticut dropped from 1,276 in 1884 to 
336 in 1888; the plurality of 6,527 in his 
favor in Indiana in 188-1 was changed to a 
plurality of 2. 34S against him in 1888; the 



26 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



plurality of 1,047 in his favor iu New York 
ill 1884 was converted into a plurality of 
13,002 against him in 1888; the plurality 
of 6,141 in his favor in Virginia 
in 1884 dwindled to 1,539 in 1888, and that 
of 4,221 in his favor in West Virginia in 
1884 almost disappeared in the plurality of 
506 in 1888. There was loss also in Dela- 
ware, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, 
and Maryland. The only close states in 
which he gained were California and New 
Jersey. The election returns show a decline 
iu his popularity nearly everywhere except 
in those Southern states where there is virtu- 
ally no republican party ; yet the election re- 
turns are but a poor criterion of that de- 
cline. The number of democrats who voted 
for him out of mere partisan feeling, disap- 
proving him and despising themselves for 
supporting him, was sim^jly enormous. In 
the locality where I live I seldom met, dur- 
ing the canvass of 1888, a democrat of ten 
years service who did not justify a vote for 
Mr. Cleveland purely on the ground of 
partisan loyalty, and declare indifference or 
hostility to the candidate. 

WHICH WAS THE TRAITOR 'i 

The canvass in New York has been 
the subject of much controversy and 
not a little misrepresentation; so 
that a few words in regard to it will 
not be out of place; and I can say them 
without auv bias in favor of Mr. Hill as a 
presidential candidate. It has been charged 
throughout the country that the defeat of 
]\Ir. Cleveland was due to the treachery of 
Mr. Hill, who was running for governor in 
1888, and was elected by a i^lurality of 
19,171. It is not known whether Mr. Cleve- 
land himself has made the accusation, but 
many of the men who are regarded as his 
special champions have made it — among 
them Mr. Endicott, secretary of war in his 
cabinet. No proof has ever been produced 
to show the disloyalty of Mr. Hill and his 
friends ; but the disloyalty of Mr. Cleveland 
and his friends has never been denied. They 
hated Mr. Hill before 1888: they hated him 
then; they hate him now; and they 
liave never let an opportunity for showing 
their hatred slip. Their scheme was to 



defeat him in 1888 and elect Mr. Cleveland, 
and they made no concealment of it. Men 
like Mr. Godkiii of the Evening Post, Mr. 
Jones of the Times, and Mr. Grace advocated 
the election of the democratic candidate for 
president and the defeat of the democratic 
candidate for governor, and they sent agents 
through the state to organize their followers 
for that purpose. Throughout the canvass, 
while the treachery of the men closest to the 
president was known, that gentleman re- 
fused to say a single word in behalf of the 
governor. It was urged that under the cir- 
cumstances a decent appearance of party 
loyalty required him to ask his supporters 
to stand by the democratic ticket as a 
whole, but he maintained a silence which 
could only mean hostility. What a con- 
trast the condiict of Mr. Hill presented! 
There were democrats determined to vote 
for him and against Mr. Cleveland, either 
because they disliked his character or be- 
cause they disapproved of his policy; but 
Mr. Hill neither encouraged them in that 
course nor acquiesced in it. He made many 
speeches during the canvass, and he always 
tooJi imins to advocate the interests of the 
party, not his own interests. He declared 
more than once that he wanted the national 
ticket elected, whatever became of the state 
ticket ; and he urged those who disliked him 
not to hesitate on that account about cast- 
ing a ballot for Mr. Cleveland. This is a 
matter of record, and my memory of it is 
clear, moreover, as I criticised Mr. Hill's 
course at the time as altogether too 
generous toward a man who aimed 
at the ruin of his political career 
and never felt the slightest sense of loyal 
obligation to an associate on the party 
ticket. But Mr. Hill could afford to be 
generous, as he was altogether stronger in 
the state for general and for special reasons 
than Mr. Cleveland ; and had the latter been 
a whit less the dupe of his own conceit, or a 
whit more susceptible to the sentiment of 
comradeship, he might have identified him- 
self with his associate, and jjossibly the pop- 
ular governor might have carried the un- 
popular president under the wire a winner 
— by a plurality at least as respectable as 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION 



27 



that of 1884. The story of the canvass of 
1888 in New York is briefly this: On the 
part of Mr. Cleveland, undisguised and un- 
denied hostility to Mr. Hill ; on the part of 
Mr. Hill, open and apparently sincere effort 
in support of Mr. Cleveland ; on the part 
of Mr. Cleveland's special friends, active ani- 
mosity and organized endeavor to defeat 
Mr. Hill; on the part of Mr. Hill's 
special friends, the suspicion of 
secret movements in retaliation. 

Now let us go behind the facts and consider 
the probabilities. Neither man liked the 
other ; which would be the more apt to be- 
tray the other ? Mr. Cleveland began his 
administration with a distinct avowal of 
non-partisanship, and carried it on for nearly 
two years on that pretence. It was the 
fashion to consider as disreputable anything 
urged on the theory that it was democratic. 
But while the president was scheming for 
the leadership of a new party to be organ- 
ized out of the elect in the two old ones, the 
governor of New York exclaimed ' ' I am a 
democrat, ' ' and with the latterance of that 
phrase party sentiment throughout the 
country asserted itself and assumed control 
of the policy of the administration. The 
democratic masses ansvrered the declaration 
with a yell of exultation. That 
phrase represents Mr. Hill fairly. 
He is a party man through 

and through, loyal to the democracy from 
head to heel; and he has the defects as well 
as the virtues of that quality. He is con- 
stantly criticised for the former; let him 
have full credit for the latter. How is it 
with his revilers ? As I have said elsewhere, 
not one of the men who accuse him of 
party treachery in 1 888 pretends to any such 
loyalty or considers it anything better than 
a reproach. Mr. Cleveland has not got it ; 
Mr. Fairchild, his secretary of the treasury, 
has not got it ; Mr. Endicott, his secretary 
of war, has not got it; Mr. Grace has 
not got it; Mr. Godkin has not got 
it. Not one of them imderstands the 
sentiment. All of them have traded, 
more or less, in politics on the lack of it. 
Each one of them would betray party obli- 
gations or party associates as a matter of 



course — indeed each has done so; and, natur- 
ally they find it difficult to believe that an- 
other would sink j^ersonal considerations for 
the sake of party interests. Even now they 
are in revolt against the action of the dem- 
ocracy of the state regularly taken in full 
convention. The denial of the duty of party 
loyalty is the only title of these men to 
political glory; and if that characteristic 
were taken away, not a single trait would 
remain to distinguish them from the general 
obscurity. Not even in 1888, with every- 
thing at stake, could they deviate into honest 
partisanship. 

PERPETI'AL CANDIDATE. 

Mr. Cleveland must have determined to 
become a candidate for the presidency in 
1892 very shortly after his defeat in 1888. 
His design is clear from his fourth annual 
message, dated December 3d of that year. 
It dealt with tariff reform, and was different 
in tone from his previous utterances on the 
subject, not simply from his first message, 
which conceded the most important protec- 
tionist doctrines, but from his message of 
the preceding year, in which he made a new 
departure. It flung aside all reserves and 
qualifications. It was for tariff reform on 
free trade lines, and aimed to commit the 
party to that policy beyond recall. The 
protective system was denounced as a denial 
of " eqiial and exact justice" to all 
our citizens ; it was described as discrimi- 
nating in favor of the manu- 
facturers, enriching the wealthy and impov- 
erishing the poor ; it was characterized as a 
partnership of the government with a fa- 
vored few for their benefit ; it was stigma- 
tized as oppressing the farmer and ruining 
country life ; it was considered as dooming 
the workingman to perpetual servitude ; it 
was declared to be the ' 'communism of com- 
bined wealth and capital:" and it was held 
responsible for all manner of public and pri- 
vate demoralization. Perhaps it is a waste 
of time to run down Mr. Cleveland's incon- 
sistencies and hypocrisies; but it may be 
worth while to recall the passage quoted in 
my letter four years ago from the first an- 
nual message and contrast it with a few sen- 
eences selected from the last annual message : 



2S 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



' ' We discover that the fortunes realized by 
our manufacturers are no longer solely the re- 
ward of sturdy industry and enlightened fore- 
sight, but they result from the discriminating 
favor of the govei-nment. and are largely built 
lip on undue exactions from the masses of our 
people."" 

"As we view the achievements of aggregated 
capital, we discover the existence of trusts, com- 
binations and monopolies, while the citizen is 
struggling far in the rear or trampled to death 
beneath an iron heel. Corporations which 
should be the carefully restrained servants of 
the people are fast becoming the people"s mas- 
ters.'" 

" But to the extent that the mass of our citi- 
zens are inordinately burdened beyond any use- 
ful public purpose, and for the benefit of a 
favored few. the government, under pretext of 
an exercise of its taxing power, enters gratui- 
tously into partnership with these favorites, to 
their advantage and to the injury of a vast ma- 
jority of our people.'" 

■• The grievances of those not included within 
the circle of these beneficiaries, when fully 
realized, will surely arouse indignation and dis- 
content."" 

"Our worliingmen. enfranchised from all de- 
lusions and no longer frightened by the cry that 
their wages are endangered by a just revision 
of our tariff laws, will reasonably demand 
through such revision steadier employment, 
cheaper means of living in their homes, freedom 
for themselves and their children from the doom 
of perpetual servitude and an open door to their 
advancement beyond the limits of a laboring 
class." 

If auytliing could be funnier than this hos- 
tility to protected industries in 1888, after 
the solicitude for their prospei'ity in 1885. it 
is the cry for the eufrauchisemeiit of the 
workingman from delusions as to the effect 
of protection on his wages, which Mr. Cleve- 
land shared three years before. Let us add 
a touch to the general absurdity by setting 
beside the remark in regard to corporations 
this sentence from the veto of the Five-cent 
Fare bill, March 3, 1883: " It is manifestly 
important that invested capital should be- 
protected, and its necessity and usefulness in 
the development of enterprises valuable to 
the people be recognized by conservative 
conduct on the jmrt of the state govern- 
ment." • 

In this message Mr. Cleveland said in clos- 



ing his plea for tariff reform : ' ' The cause 
for which the battle is waged is comprised 
within lines clearly and distinctly defined. 
It should never be compromised. It is the 
people's cause." With the instinct of baffled 
ambition he sought to identify himself with 
the policy of free trade and assert his right 
to represent it for the future. Seeking to 
confound loyalty to a party principle with 
loyalty to himself, he has stuck to that 
scheme ever since. He has written much, 
but nothing so clear and strong as his last 
annual message, though all tending to the 
same end. He has skulked in important 
campaigns and paraded himself at banquets; 
but he has never ceased to be a candidate ; 
never failed to assert that there is but one 
cause, and never hesitated to declare that he 
is its prophet. Some of his acts and some of 
his utterances are tempting subjects for 
comment : but the latter are no more than 
tri\'ial repetitions of the manifesto of Decem- 
ber 3, 1888. 

ambition's false pretenses. 

Though posing always as a candidate and 
scheming to secure a renomination, Mr. 
Cleveland did not avow his candidacy iintil 
March 9th of the present year. It was 
thought best that he should declare himself 
at that time, and the half-forgotten General 
Bragg was brought forward and wrote a let- 
ter, under date of March 5th, appealing to 
the ex-president to announce himself as a can- 
didate. That gentleman had been defeated 
for a renomination to congress in 1883; there 
was an ugly scandal in regard to his private 
as well as his political conduct, and 
he cut no great figure in public 
life for a time. In the beginning of 1888 Mr. 
Cleveland gave him his long deferred reward 
in the shape of the mission to Mexico, but as 
harmony prevailed and Tammany Hall was 
to present Mr. Cleveland's name to the na- 
tional convention, General Bragg was kept 
sedulously in the background. This year, as 
the New York democracy is against Mr. 
Cleveland, it was considered a cunning de- 
vice to recall the contest in the convention 
of 1884 and suggest to the national dem- 
ocracy the policy of honoring Mr. Cleveland 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



29 



■again for '"the enemies he has made."' 
Bragg is once more a good dog. 

The mo.st noteworthy thing about Mr. Cleve- 
land's letter to Gen. Bragg is the fact that, al- 
though it means that he is a candidate, it 
does not say so. It was easy for Mr. Cleve- 
land, in answer to the request made to him, 
to .say that he would allow his name to be 
presented to the national democratic conven- 
tion and would accept a nomination for the 
presidency cheerfully. Why did he prate 
and palaver and avoid a manly declaration? 
His natural duplicity may have had some- 
thing to do with the sneaking way in which 
he behaved ; but it is possible that he had 
the grace to be ashamed to confess his own 
selfishness — that after having secured 
two nominations he shrank from de- 
manding a third. And so, to meet a plain 
question plainly put, he made several false 
pretences. He said : " If in answering your 
questions I might only consider my personal 
desires and my individual ease and comfort, 
my response would be promptly made and 
without the least reservation or difficulty." 
The implication is that the answer would be 
Xolo cpiscopari. "But what hinders Mr. 
Cleveland from considering his own "indi- 
vidual ease and comfort?'" He insisted on a 
notable occasion that John Kelly should re- 
gard his " personal comfort " as a decisive 
consideration in political action, and the 
standard which he asked the boss 
of Tammany Hall to adopt has 
ever been his own. Is there an 
instance in which he acted on any other — 
either in ijrivate or public life* He added: 
' ' But if you are right in supposing that the 
subject is related to a duty that I owe to the 
country and to my party, a condition exists 
which makes such private and personal con- 
siderations entirely irrelevant. ' ' The only 
time when the United States ever laid its 
hand on Gruver Cleveland's shoulder and 
said. "You are needed," was when he was 
drafted for service in the Union army. He did 
not go, but sent a substitute. That was well 
enough ; but why should the man who re- 
fused to shoulder a musket and march to the 
front at a crisis, when the lot fell on him to 
go, insist that his only motive in seeking pub- 



lic office is a sense of duty and a desire for 
self-sacrifice ? Before the drafted man there 
was danger, toil, suffering: and Mr. Cleve- 
land preferred not to face the.se things. No 
doubt he had good grounds, as mam* other 
men who took a like course had, for his de- 
cision; but the fact remains that he had no 
scruples about delegating the duty of fight- 
ing for his country. And now, when the 
highest, the best paid, and one of the easiest 
situations in the country is in question, it is 
no better than arrant falsehood for him to pre- 
tend that only a sense of patriotic obligation 
would induce him to accept it. Mr. Cleveland 
has been seeking or holding honorable and 
well-paid public offices all his life ; and the 
naked truth is that he has been seeking them 
because they are honorable and well paid. 
The public service that was without pres- 
tige, that was poorly paid, that was danger- 
ous, and that was thrust upon him he re- 
fused to undertake. Mr. Cleveland remarked, 
also : "I speak of these things solely for the 
purpose of advising you that my conception 
of the nature of the presidential office and 
my conviction that the voters of our party 
should be free in selection of their candi- 
dates, precludes the possibility of my leading 
and pushing a self-seeking canvass for the 
presidential nomination, even if I had the 
desire to be again a candidate.'' Mr. Cleve- 
land became a presidential candidate in 
1888, after declaring in his letter of accept- 
ince in 1884 that the greatest danger to the 
country lay in the ambition of a president 
to secure a renominatiou. Could a more 
conclusive proof of unscrupulous self-seeking 
be desired than his intrigue for a renomina- 
tiou in the face of his assertions on this 
point ? If so, the present political con- 
dition furnishes it. There could be no 
phase of self-seeking possible, beyond grasp- 
ing for a third nomination, except the desire 
for a dictatorship or a Life tenure of the 
|n-esidency. And the men united by ■ • a 
zeal born of benefits received and fostered 
by the hope of favors yet to come, ' ' who 
rallied about him four years ago, are push- 
ing on his fortunes now. No man ever 
made the Federal xiatronage so distinctly' a 
personal perquisite. His self-.seeking is so 



70 



ARGUMENT AGAINST A THIRD NOMINATION. 



uimatnral that it sets aside even the obliga- 
tion of party loyalty. To the democracy of 
this state he owes what fortiine he has won 
and what distinctioi; he has achieved. It 
made him sheriff, maj'or, and governor, and 
it presented him twice to the democracy of 
the nation as its choice for the presidency ; 
but the moment it declared a preference for 
another candidate he flung himself into a 
movement to discredit, disgrace, and disrupt 
it. An ambition so greedy and so gross 
hardly preserves about it the decency of 
ordinary hiiman selfishness. 

CONCLUSIONS AGAINST THE CLAIMANT. 

These discussions of special points lead us 
naturally to a certain set of general conclu- 
sions. 

It is claimed that Mr. Cleveland should be 
nominated once more because he is an 
available candidate: but his defeat in 1888 
proved that he was not an available candi- 
date then, and he has done nothing whatso- 
ever since beyond making a few labored at- 
tempts at after-dinner speaking — the oratory 
of insincerity and display. He won by a 
fluke in 1884: he lost in 1888; and ne is 
weaker now than ever before. There is no 
reason whatsoever to suppose that he will 
win this year a single state that he lost at 
the last election, and he will no doubt lose 
several close states that he carried then. It 
is confessed that the democratic party can 
hardly succeed in the nation without win- 
ning in New York; and with him as a can- 
didate the regular democratic organiza- 
tion of the state will have to be overturned 
and a mere faction set in its place, so that 
victory here will be out of the question. In 
1888 he had the Federal patronage to sustain 
him and ' ' a horde of officeholders " ' ready to 
aid him ' ' with money and trained political 
service;" this year he has the same horde, 
discredited by defeat and iinpopular for their 
intrigues. In 1888 the republicans were dis- 
heartened and doubtful ; this year they are 
full of old-time hope, courage and determina- 
tion. In 1888 the fight on tariff reform took 
them somewhat by surprise; this year they 
are ready at all points, and not an available 
argument or a plausible sophistry will be 
lacking. In 18SS there was a surplus 



accumulated ; this year there is none wortli 
ciuarreling aboiit. In 1888 there was an old 
tariff law to attack, whose workings were 
well understood : this year there is a new 
law, for which full trial will be demanded. 
In 1888 the democrats made compact with 
calamity and threatened us with disaster; 
this year the republicans have national pros- 
perity for their ally. In 1888 there was a. 
weak democratic administration, neutral at- 
home, cowardly abroad ; this year there is a 
strong reijublican administration, successfitl 
at nearly all points save the management of 
the xaension bureau, and singularly brilliant 
in its foreign policy. The task of attempting 
to vindicate Mr. Cleveland will be more 
hopeless than ever. 

It is claimed that Mr. Cleveland should be 
renominated because he represents the move- 
ment for tariff reform ; but in this matter 
be was long a laggard and never a leader. 
There are scores of democrats more entitled 
to be identified with that iiolicy and abler 
to expound it. To make tariff reform de- 
pend upon his fortunes is to jeopard its 
success; for the man is by no means so 
strong in ijopular favor as the policy. He 
gains votes through it and it loses votes 
through him. And granting that he might 
win on that issue, what guarantee is there 
that he would carry out the policy ? He 
abandoned civil service reform; he may 
abandon tariff reform. If he were elected 
this year he might find it convenient to try 
another issue for 1896, possibly the exclusion, 
of European immigrants, which has great 
promise of becoming a fashionable political 
fad. The worst traitor to tariff reform is 
the man who advocates it simi^ly to help 
Mr. Cleveland to a renomination. 

It is claimed that Mr. Cleveland should be 
renominated because he is in some mysteri- 
oi;s and general way a ' ' reformer. ' ' Gen- 
uine reform of any evil is a desperate and 
dangerous task; and the real reformer is 
commonly a man of siiffering, self-sacrifice and 
tmrewarded labor. It is fair to assume that 
he who prospers on " reform" is a fraud. 
Mr. Cleveland has talked '• reform" a great 
deal, and made it the source of profit and 
power, but what did he ever reform ? He 



ARG UMENT A GAINST A THIRD NOMINA TION. 



lias the faculty of taking up a cause that has 
been won already and availing himself of its 
prestige ; but he has never originated or even 
carried out to a successful issue any benefi- 
cent policy whatsoever. His career in im- 
portant public offices has been fairly tested 
by time, and what are the results 
of it?^ He was governor of New York 
for two years; the commissions that he 
appointed have proved worthless, and he 
left less impression on the administration of 
the state than any of the summer breezes 
that blew over it in 1884. His most notable act, 
the veto of the Five-cent Fare bill on a plea 
that a change in the charter of a corporation 
by a state that granted it violates the United 
States constitution, and on the plea that the 
elevated railroads of the metropolis could 
not afford to reduce their rates of fare, 
was rendered ridiculous during his presiden- 
tial term by the action of the railroad com- 
panies, which reduced the fare of their own 
accord. Samiael J. Tilden was governor of 
New York for two years, and he changed 
the whole spirit and method of our state 
administration, and left several import- 
ant reforms embodied in the state consti- 
tution. It might be said almost that the 
shadowy hand of his spirit is still on the 
helm of the commonwealth. No greater 
contrast could be presented between the 
man who brings things to pass and the man 
who merely babbles about bringing them to 
pass. Mr. Cleveland was President of the 
United States for foiir years, and he did 
nothing worthy of his great opportunities. 
He did not leave an idea or an achievement 
behind him. The civil ser\ace reform policy 
on which he was elected he betrayed. The 
revenue policy he advocated at the last 
moment he could not carry out. The treaties 
he negotiated were rejected; and the impor- 
tant measures that he vetoed became laws 
after his retirement from office. The tax on 
oleomargarine, nullifying his plea for revenue 
reduction, and the Mexican pension bill 
nullifying his plea for economy in dealing 
with veteran soldiers, are the greatest re- 
sults of his term. And the only thing he set 
himself to do with all his energies, securing 
-a re-election, he failed to accomplish. There 



was plenty of pledges, promises, and pro- 
fessions, but a strange barrenness of per- 
formances. Mr. Cleveland has now carried 
on two national canvasses, each in the inter- 
est of a great reform. In 1 884 he would 
recognize nought '-under heaven's wide 
hollowness" but civil service reform, though 
the tariff was in a worse state than it is in 
now. In 1888 he refused to see anything but 
tariff reform on the face of the earth, though 
civil ser\ace reform was in worse plight than 
in 1884. He was. therefore, a cheat in 1884 
and a cheat in 1888; and he is a cheat now. 
He is ready for au.y " reform" that will i)ut 
him into office. 

It is claimed that Mr. Cleveland should be 
nominated because he represents in an es- 
pecial way the best elements of the demo- 
cratic party ; but so far as he represents its 
best policy and its best men he is not at all 
singular. If the claim means that he repre- 
sents certain cliques, coteries, and classes 
more than any other candidate would repre- 
sent them, the peculiarity is a disqualifica- 
tion rather than a recommendation. 

It is claimed that Mr. Cleveland should be 
nominated because he is the favorite of the 
people, but there is no reason to suppose 
that the masses care for him. The election 
returns indicate that, while he seldom fails 
to carry conventions of politicians, he has 
become a weak candidate with the people. 

It is claimed that Mr. Cleveland should be 
nominated again becau.se he is an honest 
man. But honesty is not rare, and, com- 
mon as it is," there is no certainty that Mr. 
Cleveland has it. The purchase of Red 
Top was a transaction that throws a shadow 
of suspicion back on many things in his 
career. He bought the place for 838.000 
in the spring of 1886, and expended about 
$10,000 on it for improvements; and he 
sold it in the spring of 1890 for 8140,000. 
It is plain, therefore, that the purchase was 
not to secure a home, but to make money. 
The prestige ot the president and his influ- 
ence over the commissioners of the District 
of Columbia were thrown in as elements in 
rushing up the value of certain suburban 
property. It was not an ordinary real estate 
speculation, since Mr. Cleveland took no risk. 



3'^ 



AR G UMENT A GAINST A THIRD NOMINA TION. 



He had the power, through his official posi- 
tion, to make his investment good, and it 
more than tripled in value within four years. 
The most lenient criticism on such a transac- 
tion is that it was indecent ; and a severe 
moralist must pronounce it dishonest. From 
a public point of view it was turning an 
official trust to private opportunity; and 
from a private point of view it was a swin- 
dle on less favored holders of real estate. 

It is claimed that Mr. Cleveland should be 
renominated because he is the favorite of 
men outside of the democratic party ; but no 
party can make that the overmastering con- 
sideration in choosing a candidate. A party 
exists to maintain its own principles, carry 
out its own policy and put its own favorites 
into positions of power and responsibility, 
not to maintain the principles, advocate the 
policy, or elect the champion of others. The 
first requisite for a party candidate, there- 
fore, is that he shall represent the party — 
and^ command the party vote. If beyond 
that he can attract outsiders, so much the 
better. But that party which 

risks alienating friends to conciliate 
enemies ceases to subserve the ends of its or- 
ganization, and ought to perish. Mr. Cleveland 
will not command the full democratic vote 
in the close states. He will attract the votes 
of a few outsiders, but their help will not 
come as a good-will offering, but in the 
guise of an alliance on conditions. They are 
recruits of a peculiar character that repel 
more voters than they muster. They have a 
contempt for common loyal democrats that 
they do not attempt to disguise : and the dis- 
like is reciprocated cordially. They want to 
dictate candidate, policy, and the division of 
the spoil, and they say to the democratic 
masses, "You cast the ballots, we'll do the 
rest. ' ' In such a transaction the democratic 
party does not gain strength by absorbing 
new elements ; it simply enters into a coali- 
tion and weakens itself by the expedient as 
it did in 1ST2. 

Finally, it is claimed that Mr. Cleveland 
should be nominated a third time because he 
is the hero of the age, the savior of society. 
'■ the logical candidate," the man essential to 
democratic prosperity and necessary to the 



safety of the country ; and it is this claim be- 
yond all other things that should bar his re- 
election to the presidency. If Mr. Cleveland 
were all that his fondest admirer supposes 
him to be, such a plea for his renomination 
would be not simply worthless, but pernicious. 
It is against the very essence of a common- 
wealth — that by which it is, and is what it is. 
It is the cardinal doctrine of personalism as 
against party, and imperialism as against 
democracy; and if this man becomes a can- 
didate a third time that will be the real 
issue in the canvass ; for ' ' the logical candi- 
date ' ' brings it with him as ' 'the logical issue. " ' 
A stanch democrat w^ho voted for Mr. Cleve- 
land in 1884 and in 1888 said to me not long 
ago : "I shall not vote for him this year 
should he be renominated. I will not vote 
for the same man for the presidency three 
times in succession, on any plea whatsoever 
or under any circumstances whatsoever. ' ' It 
is a good rule for every citizen to adopt - 
There is no attempt made to disguise per- 
sonalism in the Cleveland movement as 
distinguished from democracy. He is 
praised as superior to his party; 
every policy is judged with reference to 
its bearing on his fortunes, and not on its 
merits ; a canditate for speaker is advocated 
or opjDOsed, not because of his qualifications or 
disqualifications for the office, but as a friend 
or enemy of the " Perpetual President. " If 
an editor refuses to praise him, pressure is 
brought to bear by the Cleveland managers 
on the owners of the paper for his dismissal ; 
if a professor in a college says a good word 
for somebody else, the mugwump press threat- 
ens to boycott the institution ; if a democratic 
leader dares to cherish an honorable ambi- 
tion for the presidency, the literary and po- 
litical henchmen that surround the Claim- 
ant, like bravos about a nobleman in medieval 
Italy, waylay and attack his possible rival 
for the assassination of his character. Terse- 
ness has gone out of fashion because he is 
verbose ; the rules of rhetoric are in disfavor 
because he mixes his metaphors ; and two of 
the ten commandments are put in abeyance 
to accommodate the Decalogue to the defects 
of his moral character. It may be said that 
a third nomination of Mr. Cleveland is not 



AR G UMENT A GAINST A THIRD NOMINA TION. 



33- 



like a nomination for a third term ; but while 
it is not so in fact it is so in spirit. The 
plea in his behalf is that which Washing- 
ton discredited forever when made to .iustify 
a third nomination of himself; and it is that 
which the democratic party attacked so fu- 
riously when it was made as a pretext for 
the third nomination of General G-rant. Sncli 
a nomination would be the abandonment of 
democratic tradition. Defeat on that issue 
would close the long career of the party in dis- 
grace; victory on' it would transform the 
partj' into a purely personal and imperial 
organization, and Mr. Cleveland would be 
the logical candidate once more in 1896. The 
ambition of such a man never turns into 
moderation; the slavishness of his followers 
never changes to independence. What coiild 
be more significant than the fact that we are 
called upon to argue, in 1893, against the 
third nomination of one who declared in 1884 
that the eligibility of the president to re- 
election is a serious danger to the repub- 
lic and that he should be disqualified for a 
second term by a constitutional amendment? 
On this ground alone he should be beaten ; 
and on this ground alone the party that 
nominates him should die a dog"s death. This 
much is said as if Mr. Cleveland were the 
ideal hero and statesmen of our history; but 
what is he in realitj'? Who is this man to 
whom we are asked to give the supremacy 
which the Father of the Country denied to 
himself, and which we deuiea to the piTre- 
minded and simple-hearted soldier who was 
the foremost champion of the nation in the 
ci\'il war? I take no pleasure in the theme, 
seldom touch it except on public considera- 
tions, and never without regret, when what 
I say has in it a touch of harshness. He is a 
man of ordinary capacities, defective train- 
ing, selfish disposition, and somewhat coarse 
nature, who met with unexpected success; 
who was minded to take great honors sober- 
ly, but lost his head; who had an instinct to- 
ward integrity, bvit failed to follow it ; who was 
constrained by circiimstances to profess 
many things he did not believe and some he 
did not understand ; who put off simplicity 
and its freedom and piit on hypocrisy and 



its obligations: who met with oppt)rtunity 
before he was ready to use it and is eager for 
another encounter; who lives without an 
ideal and true to the simple plan of getting 
for himself all the money, honor, power and 
gratification out of life that he can. A more 
unheroic figure never posed for popular ad- 
miration. His career is unmarked by any 
act of self-sacrifice or by any brilliant 
achievement ; and it is stained by faults of 
conduct, many of which it is difficult 
to excuse, and some of which it is im- 
possible to palliate. The best that can be 
said of him is that he has done well for him- 
self, and probably means to do better. It is 
sometimes asked : How, then, do you ac- 
count for the fact that so many men of char- 
acter and ability profess to admire him and 
make his cause their own:-* Some of these 
men are renegade republicans. They think 
it due to their self-respect to maintain that 
a new revelation was made for their conver- 
sion. An angel of the Lord met them in 
the way ; and he is disguised in the portly 
form of Mr. Cleveland. Some of these 
men are democratic politicians who know 
their own fortunes are bound up in his suc- 
cess, and magnify him to exalt themselves. 
Some of these men are members of the 
learned professions, and others are snobs in 
society and cads in club houses, who regard 
themselves as the classes, and think that Mr, 
Cleveland represents their cause against that 
of the masses. Some of these men are un- 
touched by either selfishness or conceit in 
their homage. Their honest delusion, to 
which, for instance, a man like Mr. Lowell 
has given expression, I do not pretend to 
explain. I accept it as a fact in life and na- 
ture and use it to explain other curious 
things. It is the key to many a problem in 
history that has puzzled me for years. See- 
ing from actual observation and personal 
knowledge of the j^rocess how easily a false 
ideal arises and is puffed out \vith bombast 
to heroic proportions, I no longer wonder 
over Mohammed, or Joe Smith, or J^apoleon 
the Little, or General Boulanger, or the 
Tichborne claimant. 



